


The Persistence of Memory

by blackrabbit42



Category: J2 - Fandom, Supernatural RPF
Genre: Art, Autism Spectrum, M/M, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 11:04:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 52,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7219846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackrabbit42/pseuds/blackrabbit42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Come, sit down in front of me. Take a picture. Get out your phone and write yourself a note. Something like. “I am sitting in front of a boy named Jared. He has brown hair that’s on the longish side for a boy and blue grey eyes. About 6’3”. Remember him.” Then walk outside. Take a walk around the block. I’m not even going to tell you to come back and sit down with me again, because you won’t remember. But here’s the strange thing. Later, if you looked at your phone, you wouldn’t find a picture of a boy you don’t recognize. You wouldn’t find a confusing note. Because they wouldn’t be there. And that wouldn’t strike you as odd, because you wouldn’t even be thinking about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Persistence of Memory

WARNINGS: I'd rather not tag a warning that might spoil the end of this story, but if you are a person who really, really wants to be warned for things, scroll down and read the first few comments.

 **Fic title:** The Persistence of Memory  
**Author name:** blackrabbit42  
**Artist name:** riverofwind  
**Genre:** J2 AU  
**Pairing:** J2  
**Rating:** PG for boy kissing  
**Word count:** 50K+  
**Warnings:** minor character death

Sometimes, I wonder if I’m real. Most of the time, yeah, I know, this is the sort of self-important navel-gazing a lot of kids my age do, but I think I’ve got more reason than most to wonder. 

When it comes to the old “I think, therefore I am,” I meet the qualifications. In fact, I’d have to guess that I’ve put a lot more thought into the nature of my existence than the average seventeen year old. Because accomplishing even the simplest tasks takes a lot of observation, planning and luck when no one can remember you. 

Take this moment, right now, for example. I’m having breakfast. In a diner, of course, because—let’s get this out of the way—I am by necessity, homeless. A normal boy might come in, sit in a booth, order his food, eat, pay and leave. Not me. I have to sit at the counter front and center, where the waitress can see me all the time. Otherwise, she’ll forget about me, and I won’t get my food. It helps, too, to eat in one of those diners that has a window right through to the kitchen so the cooks see me when they’re making my food, because otherwise, even if the waitress remembers me, if the cook doesn’t, the order slip might disappear and I won’t get my food. I make a point of catching the cook’s eye right away, increasing the chances that they’ll glance up at me now and then. 

Today, I make it easier on myself. “Cornflakes and orange juice,” I tell Lindy, my waitress. Cereal is something Lindy can get herself, the boxes are right on the counter behind her, so I don’t need to worry about the cooks. 

“You here on a trip or something?” Lindy asks as she pours the milk. As friendly as she is, she doesn’t recognize me, although she’s been my waitress every morning for the past month or so. I’ve been in the kitchen here, it’s very clean. For New York, that’s about all I could ask for. 

“I might check out a museum this morning,” I say. It’s true. Metropolitan Museum of Art is on my list today. It’s not my favorite, but I’m kind of getting bored with the Natural History one. 

“Oh, I’ve always wanted to go there,” Lindy says, pausing for a moment with one hand on her angular hip. I watch as her rings slide down to the knuckle on her right hand. We have this conversation often. I’ve yet to find an actual New York attraction that she _has_ seen. It’s sad, really, how much regular people’s lives get in the way of their lives. It’s not easy for me to make money, it’s extremely hard, in fact, but I always over-tip Lindy, in hopes that it helps. 

On that point, I’m not really sure. I don’t really know how it works, but it’s not just that people can’t remember me. It’s that all evidence of me disappears. Come, sit down in front of me. Take a picture. Get out your phone and write yourself a note. Something like. “I am sitting in front of a boy named Jared. He has brown hair that’s on the longish side for a boy and blue grey eyes. About 6’3”. Remember him.”  Then walk outside. Take a walk around the block. I’m not even going to tell you to come back and sit down with me again, because you won’t remember. But here’s the strange thing. Later, if you looked at your phone, you wouldn’t find a picture of a boy you don’t recognize. You wouldn’t find a confusing note. Because they wouldn’t be there. And that wouldn’t strike you as odd, because you wouldn’t even be thinking about it. 

I’ve never seen anything physically disappear. So I’m not really sure what happens to Lindy’s tips. It’s possible that since it’s just money, and not anything actually about me, that she gets to keep it. Who knows. 

I don’t actually pay for my meal, and I don’t feel great about it, because stealing is stealing and even if I’ll never get caught, it’s still wrong. It doesn’t keep me up at night or anything, but I have to be my own keeper. No one else is going to make me be good. 

“Can you show me where the restroom is?” I ask Lindy. She hooks a thumb over her shoulder, and I slide off the stool and head in the direction she indicated. Five minutes in the bathroom, and when I come out again, my place has been cleared, a new paper placemat waiting for the next customer. No one even glances up as I walk out the door. 

The museum doesn’t open until 10:00, which gives me a couple hours to kill. I could try dog walking this morning. I fish through my bag to find the list. Sunday, Amsterdam Ave. If I hoof it over there, I can make it for the eight o’clock route. 

I’ve got three lockers at Grand Central Station where I keep my things, including my dog-walking kit; a couple of leashes, a roll of duty-bags and dispenser, and some fake business cards I printed up. Dog walking is another thing that I feel guilty about, but not too much so. I’ve been dealt a pretty crappy hand in life, and I have to get by however I can. I’d be completely willing to do this the honest way, but for me, that’s just not possible. 

Sarah Jones is a dog walker with an extremely choice route. The people who live this close to Central Park pay fifty dollars an hour per dog because a) they can afford it, and b) they are the sort of people that believe there’s a difference between someone who charges fifty dollars an hour for dog walking and someone who charges ten dollars an hour. The only real difference is that the fifty dollar an hour dog walkers have better websites and the balls to ask for more. 

I watched Sarah for two weeks before I scooped a client. The way I see it, I _am_ working for the money, and Sarah walks enough dogs each day that missing one now and then doesn’t really make that much of a difference. I have seven different dog walkers that I can choose from, so I don’t leave too much of a dent in anyone’s take. 

Sarah’s second pick-up is Mrs. Greyson of 322 Amsterdam Ave, apartment 5b. She has two King Charles Spaniels who are reasonably well-behaved on the leash. Sarah charges eighty dollars for the two of them, so I wish I could chose Mrs. Greyson more often, but I worry about spooking her off swallowing my substitute routine. She answers the door with a dog under each arm and a harried look on her face, as usual. I’m not sure what she’s doing in there, but she never leaves and doesn’t have any kids. None of my business really. 

“Oh!” she stops short. “You’re not Sarah.”  Her overly lipsticked mouth makes a comical little “O” of surprise. 

I smile. “Ms. Jones was running a little late today, so she asked me to substitute for her to make sure that Silky and Clementine got out on time.”  Silky and Clementine are wiggling and whining. They don’t care who takes them out, they just need to go. And I need to get out of here before Sarah comes along at her regularly scheduled time. 

Mrs. Greyson chews her lip and puts on a show of looking conflicted, but she’ll give in, apparently she doesn’t have time to stand in the hallway dickering around with this. I pull out my card, and she takes it gratefully. I’ve given her my card half a dozen times, and it seems to be what reassures her. 

“Is eighty enough?” she asks, reaching into her designer purse which hangs on a hook next to the door. I’ve noticed that the purse always matches her outfit, a different one each time I’ve been here. Weird. 

“Since I’m a sub, you get a discount,” I say. “Just sixty today.”  It feels so good to get those crisp bills in my hand. I can usually get by without any money at all, but it’s good insurance. Just in case things don’t go as planned. 

“They don’t like the horses in Central Park,” she reminds me as I clip on their leashes. 

I know. But I nod my head. “Ok, thanks,” I say. 

Silky and Clementine lick my face and nuzzle in under my arms as I carry them down the hall. I think they remember me. I think. I wish I could ask them. Either way, I pretend they do. “Hey girls,” I say, giving them an affectionate squeeze. “I missed you.”  

Maybe they missed me. I wouldn’t know. 

A little over an hour later, I return Silky and Clementine to the apartment. “I found your dogs in Central Park,” I say when Mrs. Greyson opens the door. 

“Oh my goodness,” she exclaims. “You naughty things!  How on earth did you get out?”  She looks harassed and exasperated, her iron-grey hair pushed up a little out of style on the left side of her head, but she covers the dogs little faces with kisses when I hand them over. “Thank you so much for taking the time to bring them all the way up here.”

“They’re very friendly,” I remark and fondle Clementine’s chin. I turn as if to leave. 

“Wait,” she says, reaching for your purse. “Let me thank you.”  She frowns slightly when she opens her wallet, no doubt a small part of her brain is noting that there’s sixty fewer dollars there than she expects, but it’s not enough to really grab her attention. 

“No, no, that’s ok,” I say. “They’re sweet dogs.”  

“I insist,” she says, pressing a twenty into my hand. “The city needs more people like you.”

Huh, I think as I thank her and walk away, I wonder what that would be like. It’s something that’s often on my mind, actually. Because, there might be _a lot_ more people like me than you’d ever know. You wouldn’t know. You’d have no idea. And, when it comes down to it, there’s no reason that I’d necessarily know about it either. Just because I’m like me doesn’t mean that I would recognize someone like myself. There’s no rulebook regarding my condition, as far as I know, so anything’s possible. Maybe we all meet dozens of people like me every day, and don’t even know it. Which brings me back to my original point. Those people wouldn’t seem real to me. So what’s there to say I’m real either?

 

********

The museum opens at 10:00. I’m waiting on the steps at 9:55. There’s a boy here who is waiting to go in, but he’s acting differently than the people around us. He’s tall and lanky and he stands out from everybody, but he doesn’t seem to care. It’s weird. 

I don’t do well with weird. Well, actually I like weird things, but only when they’re contained. For example. Picasso. Totally weird. But that kind of weirdness can’t _get_ me. It’s contained three ways. One: in the past. Picasso lived from October 25, 1881 until April 8, 1973. That means he died twenty-five years before I was born. There’s no way I can be harmed by Pablo Picasso’s weirdness. Two: geographically. Picasso lived in Europe, so even if he was alive now, the chances that I’d accidentally see him on the street are pretty small. Three: frames. I prefer to stay away from Picasso’s sculptures because they are right out in the air, like they could spill out onto me at any moment. I like the paintings and sketches better, enclosed in their frames. Then, I can look as close as I like. Which isn’t even as close as you are allowed to. I know the rules, I know how close you can get, and I don’t need to get that close to see. To see the weirdness in a safe way. In a way that I can study it. 

You might be wondering if I’m psychotic or something. I’m not. If I really use only my brain, and facts that I know about the world, I know that weirdness cannot “get on me.”  But that’s the way it feels to me. Facts in your brain and feelings in your body are two different things. 

So it makes me nervous when I see someone who’s acting weird. A lot of people think that since I have autism, I don’t understand how normal people behave. If you think that, then you don’t know me. Ever hear of “early intervention?” That’s when your parents realize really early on that their kid is different, get you tested, find out you are “on the spectrum” and then get together a team of people who work like maniacs to teach you how normal people behave. Thanks to my parents, early intervention, and my “team,” I probably know more about how normal people behave than most normal people. It just doesn’t come naturally to me, that’s all. 

I need ways to remind myself to do the things that normal people do on autopilot. The biggest example is making eye contact when you are talking to someone. If I look at someone’s face while we’re talking, it’s too much stimulus, and then I can’t really pay attention to what they’re saying. But I’ve been taught that you need to do it anyway, so I make glance at a person’s face at least one time per minute during conversations. I’ve had to practice things like how far away to stand during a conversation, how to notice if someone is getting bored listening to what you are talking about, when to say things that don’t really mean anything like “hello” and “how are you” and “fine, thank you.” 

So when someone is not behaving the way normal people do, I always notice it. Like this boy. I watch him for a little while, remembering not to stare, even though I really want to. If this were a perfect world, there would be a video of him that I could watch, and rewind, and watch again, as many times as I wanted to. Then I could figure out what was weird about him, and there would be no way it could come off the screen and be on me. 

I’m not sure exactly what it is that he’s doing different. It’s a little bit that he’s not really paying attention to the people around him. But not quite. I watch, and he keeps the right amount of distance between him and everyone else. If someone does something to catch his attention, he looks up, but then looks away like no one here matters. I also think he’s not going to wait in line when the door opens. His body doesn’t turn the right way when it goes back to being itself. 

Sometimes when someone is acting different, it’s because they’re on the spectrum, like me, and they don’t know how to act. Not everyone gets early intervention. Other times, it’s because they are really stressed and that stress pushes them to act in ways most people don’t. I don’t think either of those are right for him. 

I’m going to have to use my strategies here. He’s not noticing me. Nothing he is doing is dangerous, so it’s ok. I think about what it would be like if he did notice me, and then something weird happens. I imagine smiling at him, and I imagine him smiling back. I imagine him noticing me, and not acting like I don’t matter like he’s acting with all these other people. 

Ok, weird meter alarm just went off. He _is_ getting his weird on me. I look through my satchel for my map of the museum. I’m going to think about my own things for now. 

Like my plan for today’s trip. I have my regular route, the paintings I always go see, with a one-hour block in the middle to see a new exhibit. This is my mother’s idea. To make a sort of sandwich with the stuff I’m familiar with and something I’m not.  That way, I feel pretty comfortable before I start the something new, and I know I have something comfortable to look forward to if the new thing turns out to be weird. 

Today, my new thing was supposed to be the _About Face, Human Expressions on Paper_ exhibit, but I already feel a little uncomfortable about that unexpected boy, so I decide to switch it to one of the textiles exhibits instead. I like the patterns, and if I tell my mom that I liked how you could watch the patterns evolve as trade expanded the horizons of the artists, it might make her forget how much she wanted me to be interested in those _Expressions._

The security guards open the doors, and I stand and wait for the people who have been gathering to head up the stairs and go in before I follow. This is one situation where people break the rules left and right and it just doesn’t make sense to me because seriously, do they think they are somehow not going to make it into the museum if they don’t crowd up at the doors and push ahead like cattle in the slaughter chute?  All those strangers’ bodies touching. No thank you. I’ll wait. 

While I’m waiting, I see the boy again, and he doesn’t wait in line, he sort of walks around the line and into the museum. This is technically not against the rules of the museum. Admission is free to the public, but most people pay the “suggested donation” of twenty-five dollars. And people who don’t want to pay twenty-five dollars usually pay a “polite quarter” instead. So, he isn’t breaking a rule of the museum, but he is breaking a rule of politeness. 

The map. It’s 10:02, and if I want to do my regular route and the special collection to appease my mom, I can’t stand around on the steps trying to figure out why this boy is doing what he’s doing. He’s lying, but that doesn’t mean I have to think about it. I can put that aside, follow my plan. I’ve got my map and schedule.

“Good morning, Jensen,” says the attendant at the ticket booth. Claire. She has the biggest smile of anyone in the museum, which I like because even though the museum is a really safe place for me to be, with more rules than just about any other type of place, there’s not a lot of smiling or laughing going on, which is too bad. 

There are literally millions of items in the collection. Every type of amazing and interesting thing you can think of. All with helpful little plaques to let you know what the heck you are looking at in case you didn’t know. You would think people would just walk around with big old smiles full of wonder. But next time you’re at the museum, do this: for a moment, stop looking at the art, and look at the people in the museum. Half of them look exhausted, which I can understand. It’s a big museum, and a lot of people travel far to get here. Their feet hurt, they’re hungry, they’re carrying too many things with them. And then there are the moms and teachers, chasing their kids around trying to get them to follow the rules. They’re not getting to see any of the stuff they came to see, they keep their eyes on the kids. The other half though, they’re the ones I don’t understand. The ones who look like they’re studying for a test or something. All serious and frowny. Like they think if it looks like they’re actually enjoying the art, that will make them look common. 

“Is everything okay?” Claire asks, which is my cue to notice that I’m stimming. Just a little bit, my knuckle rubbing my temple, no big deal, it’s the sort of thing where as soon as I notice I’m doing it, I can stop. 

I think for a moment. “Yes, everything is okay,” I reassure myself. As soon as I get in, I can start my schedule, and everything will be back to normal. The Metropolitan Museum of Art hosts ten thousand guests a day, spread out over six hundred and forty two salons. The chances that I will run into that boy again are very, very small. Not as small as the chance of meeting Picasso here, which is zero, but still small. 

“You have a good day, then,” Claire tells me, and turns to the next person in line. I clip my metal button on my collar and head straight for my favorite painting, _The Portal (Sunlight)_ by Claude Monet. 

On my way to the painting, I pass the line for the special _Expressions_ exhibit, and this is really bad luck because that boy is at the front of the line, and he is lying to the docent. I can tell by his body language. This is something that my therapist drilled into me when I started high school, because there was a lot of concern that I’d get bullied or taken advantage of. How to recognize when someone is teasing. How to recognize when someone’s words don’t really mean what they sound like. How to recognize when someone is lying. 

The weird thing is, he doesn’t even care that he’s lying. Not even a little bit. He’s completely relaxed and I wonder what it would look like if he was hooked up to a lie detector. I picture wires running from his body to my brain and my body lighting up and making a “bing!” noise. “He’s lying!” I’d say. 

If I ever lied, I would shake apart. I’d have to be stimming all over the place to try and cover up the big, wrong space between what was true and what I was saying, and then of course you’d know I was lying because I’d be acting weird and stressed. Not this boy. He doesn’t care that what he’s saying isn’t true and doesn’t care if the docent knows it or not. Maybe that’s why the docent believes him, because he motions for him to go in. I make myself move on as well. 

The bench in front of _The Portal_ is empty, so that’s good. I sit down and pull out my sketch book. 

It’s totally legal to sketch the paintings and other works of art in the museum. They don’t like you to take photos with a flash, but lots of people take pictures. I don’t think they are getting their money’s worth, because it’s too easy to take a picture. You just press a button. Then all you have to do is look. But when you sketch, you really have to be an active observer. When you copy the lines yourself, it forces you to wonder why the artist made the choices he did. You see what parts are emphasized, what parts fall into the shadows. 

I do contour drawings. Which means I only draw the outlines, I don’t fuss around with the shading or coloring. In a way, it makes me work harder, because I have to capture the essence of each piece with fewer tools than the artist used. It also shows how much meaning each component has, the lights and the darks and the brushstrokes or textures. 

One day, I’m going to try spending my whole morning with one painting, and see if that changes the way I see it, if I’m not in the back of my mind worrying about running into the time I’ve scheduled for the next. Because if that next one is on my mind, isn’t it possible that it’s influencing how I’m seeing this one?  

Today is not that day though. I’ve got a pretty good sketch of _The Portal_ , good enough that I might show my dad. Time to move on. 

_ La Carmencita _ by John Singer Sargent really makes me happy because there are not a lot of distractions from the subject. It’s all about that amazingly fierce pride on her face, pride in her body and what it can do, and I’ve looked at her face and drawn it more times than I can count, and I’ve never found a trace of darkness there. 

I stop two steps into the room. The boy is there. He’s tall, and his body takes up too much space, he’d be impossible to miss. Standing in front of _La Carmencita_. He’s not breaking any museum rules, but he’s kind of breaking the rule I made up for him earlier, the rule that the museum is big enough so that I wouldn’t see him again. And not only am I seeing him again, but he’s standing in front of the exact painting I want to look at, and I know it’s not _my_ painting or my museum, but it feels like he’s intruding on something that’s mine, because it looks like he likes the painting almost as much as I do. 

He hasn’t seen me yet, so I have a moment or two to look and try to figure him out. His clothes look expensive, well-made, but they’re not fashionable. Comfortable. Lots of pockets. He’s not very good looking, just an average guy, but something about him makes me not able to look away. The way his eyes are looking at all the different parts of the painting and really seeing it. I reassess my initial impression that his eyes were blue-grey. Now they look hazel-ish. 

He ducks his head and hides a smile when he sees I am watching him, which is something girls usually do because I am really good looking. I know that’s a weird thing to think about myself, but I see myself in the mirror every day, and it’s not like I’m blind. It doesn’t really do me any good though, because even though girls get all flirty and giggly when they first see me, that all changes after they talk to me for a few minutes. 

I try not to let it bother me, because I get it. My mother says it’s going to take a special kind of girl to see past some of my differences to the cool stuff underneath. We’ll see. 

I feel like I’m being pulled in two ways. One part of me wants to keep my distance. His differentness makes me uncomfortable. But another part of me is really curious. What did he say to the docent? What was he lying about?  

“Which do you like better?” he asks me suddenly. 

I know what he’s talking about. There’s another full-length portrait of this dancer in another salon, by a different artist, William Merrit Chase. It’s pretty cool that he knows there’s two. All of a sudden, it’s like some radar in my head goes off. _This is a person who shares a common interest with me._ I have to clench my hand by my side, because there’s a sudden rush of directions in my head, and it feels like stage fright, and I want to knuckle my forehead to give me a chance to put them all in the right order and not mess this up. Ok. First thing. 

I look him in the eye, stick my hand out and say, “Hello. My name is Jensen. It’s nice to meet you.”  

I can tell by the way his smile freezes that I didn’t quite get it right. I tried to soften up everything, my voice, my muscles, my eyes. But I probably didn’t pull it off. To his credit, he recovers quickly. He takes my hand, and his is cool and soft and he sort of touches the back of my palm with the fingertips of his other hand and _that’s_ what loosens me up. I’m looking at his shoulder, but I can tell that he’s looking at me now the way he was looking at the painting. Trying to see all the parts of me. I take a quick glance into his eyes, to confirm. Yup. And he’s smiling. 

“I’m Jared,” he says before letting go of my hand.

“There’s a special exhibit here on Jared French, the artist. He was a pioneer of the magical realism movement in the 1930’s and a muse for several other artists. Both his works and other artists’ portraits of him are on display.”

“I didn’t know that,” he says. “I chose it because I liked how it sounds.”

“You chose your own name?”  That’s weird. My weird meter is really dinging all kinds of alarms, because I’ve never met anyone who chose their own name before, and because I know that he lied to the docent, and was weird in some way that I couldn’t put my finger on earlier, but bigger than either of those things is the fact that he’s still talking to me and standing close like he’s not looking for a reason to get away. Even weirder than that is that _I_ don’t want to get away either. 

“Sure,” he says, shrugging. “I never knew my mother or father, forget what they named me. I’m homeless, so I’m the only one who it matters to. I used to come up with new names for myself all the time, but I’ve been sticking with Jared for quite a while now.”

Ok, this is it. I’ve got it, why he seems different. It’s like he doesn’t care what happens next. Like, he doesn’t care if I don’t understand what he’s talking about, or if it makes me have a million questions. I think about it for a moment. That’s something I can cope with. 

“This one.” I say.

He looks confused. “What?”

“You asked me which one I like better. This one.”

“Oh!” he says, turning back to the painting. His eyes move all over it. “Why?”

“This one is more real. She’s posing. The other one, she’s supposed to be dancing, but you can tell she’s just _posed_ like she’s dancing. This one, where she’s still, you can see the tension in her body, like she _wishes_ she were dancing. The other one, it looks like she wishes she wasn’t having to pose like that.”

He looks from me to the painting. “I never thought about it that way. To think about what she was thinking. That’s cool that the artist could make us think of her as a living person, all these years later. Amazing, right?”

“It’s a little easier with this one,” I say. “We know who she was, a little bit about what she was like. Look, there’s even video.”  I gesture towards the monitor mounted to the left of the painting. Jared nods. 

“You sound like you know a lot about art,” he says. 

“Well, I come here every day in the summer, and I don’t forget things,” I explain, touching the pad of my forefinger to the pad of my thumb to remind myself not to knuckle my forehead. This really interesting person is talking to me and I’m talking back and don’t think I don’t notice how he’s changed from _weird_ to _interesting_ in my mind. I think about the other Jared, Jared French, the artist. The other thing he was known for was that he was a leader in the gay artists community. Thinking about that makes me realize another thing about this Jared. His body language is like how guys stand and move when they like a girl. 

I’ve literally never been in this situation before. I remember how he was acting. Like he didn’t care what happens next. He doesn’t care if I won’t look him in the eye, he doesn’t care if he’s “encouraging” me, even though by now it must be obvious to him that there’s something different about me. 

“What do you mean, you don’t forget things?” he asks. Suddenly, he’s the one who is looking away, not meeting my eye. I don’t think I said anything wrong. My therapist says when in doubt, to just be myself.

“I’m sure I forget some things, I’m not like a super genius or anything, but one of the characteristics many people on the autism spectrum share is an exceptional memory.”

“Mmm,” he says. He’s looking back at the painting. Everything about him is telling me I said the wrong thing, but I can’t figure out what it was. And I realize I want to figure it out. I want to keep talking to him and have him look at me and to know what he thinks about—

“Which do you like better?” I ask. 

His smile comes back, but it’s a bit of a fake smile. Not fake towards me, fake towards himself. 

“I like the other one a little better, I like the colors. But I really just like the idea that two really amazing artists painted the same woman. It’s not like she was a queen or anything. And here we are, decades later, looking at her, imagining what she was like. How cool that is that she’s remembered after all the time.”

Inside, I’m really glad he said he liked the other one better, because if he said this one just to agree with me, that might mean he wasn’t really interested in talking to me. I’m not doing too bad here. 

“She’s not the only one,” I say. “There’s lots of people who were muses or models for more than one artist, like Jared French. Lots of artists thought he was beautiful.”

Jared turns to me and now his smile is smaller than ever and it’s mostly not covering up the sadness behind it. “It was really nice meeting you, Jensen,” he says, and turns to walk away.

Half an hour ago, I was worried about running into him and thinking it would be almost as bad as running into Picasso, but now the thought of him walking away and not seeing him again feels really, really awful. It makes a panicky little feeling in my stomach and it feels worse than the fear I have of doing the wrong thing here so I say, in a voice louder than I would normally use in a museum, “Wait. Can I buy you a cup of coffee in the café?” I cannot believe I have done this. I press my knuckles into my forehead and tap. Twice. 

“I’m sorry, no,” he says, offering me one last sad smile, and walks away. 

++++++++

_ Jared _

Okay, that sucked. Things like that always suck, but this time, more than normal for some reason. I’ve given into temptation before, spent the afternoon with a boy, even been kissed a few times, but the more time I allow myself to indulge in that sort of thing, the worse it is when they forget me in the time it takes for them to take a bathroom break. 

And this guy? Jesus, that smile. It broke my heart just looking at him. It is literally not fair for regular people walking on the street to be that carelessly handsome, all tousled-haired and freckled. And to know about art. And to know about the women in art, not just the painters who painted them. What the heck, universe?  Why would you stick it to me like that?

Because, for as long as I can remember, the universe has been sticking it to me. Think back to the worst day of your life. Maybe someone you love died. Maybe you found out you had a terrible illness. Those things are awful, and I’m not saying my worst day was worse than yours, but it was definitely different because of this:  even when the worst things happen, _you_ can still depend on reality behaving a certain way. 

My worst day is my earliest memory, so I am not really sure what my life was like before that. Maybe before that day, I was totally normal. A mother, a home, a baby book, a photo album with pictures of me as I grew. Maybe I even had (have?) siblings. What I remember is this. The first day of preschool, bidding my mother a tearful goodbye. And at the end of the day, just a short day, a little preschooler’s day, no one coming to get me. The teachers’ confusion. The “helpful” policeman. 

I knew my address, but when the policeman knocked on the door of my home, they were met with only a puzzled expression from my mother. I remember standing among the forest of adult legs on the doorstep listening to my mother claiming she had no idea who I was or why I would have given her address to the police. At one point, I ran into the apartment, searching for the safety of my room, only to find it changed. 

Gone were my cowboy-themed walls and treasured possessions. I only have a vague recollection of what was in their place, but it was definitely adult and foreign. Eventually the police took me away, kicking and screaming for my mother. 

This nightmarish scene would repeat itself over and over for several weeks. Every time the police knocked on the door, my mother would answer, the same puzzled look on her face. I was the only one who realized we’d all done this before. 

I don’t really remember how I survived that. Which I realize is ironic, but hey, do you remember the day by day story of your preschool years?  Even your elementary school years?  Neither do I. I remember some things. Emergency foster home placements that lasted less than a day. Homeless shelter workers who were particularly kind, nannies in Central Park who were not. 

How far back in your life can you give a reliable timeline history?  All I can say for sure is that by the time I was eight, I had a reasonable system worked out for myself. I learned what I could get away with and what I couldn’t. 

If you look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which I learned about in the Museum of Natural History, thank you very much, I’ve got the bottom tier covered; physiological needs: air, food, water, shelter. I may not always have food and shelter lined up as reliably as you do, but good enough. 

Safety is the next tier according to Maslow: financial, health, and personal security. Those can be a bit dicey, like the time I broke my arm falling on a patch of ice on the sidewalk. No medical records, no parent or guardian, no insurance. I had to pull some pretty intense shenanigans in the ER to make sure I was passed directly from one nurse to another until my arm was set to make sure I wasn’t forgotten in a waiting room. Living in New York, there’s always a risk you’ll become a target of some sort of crime, so security is never going to be one-hundred percent. But I get by. 

Once a person’s physiological and safety needs are met, the next level of human need is for love and belonging. In that department, you could say I’m well and properly screwed, and if we are to believe everything Maslow tells us, then I’m probably destined to be a psychopath. I am literally unlovable. My own mother refused to acknowledge that I belonged to her. At some level, I feel like I belong to the large social group known collectively as New York City, so maybe that’s what saves me. 

I’ve met many, many kind and wonderful people that I’ve found ways to include in my life, even if they don’t know it. Lindy at the diner, Walter the security guard here at the museum. I’ve got a map in my head of people I can turn to in time of need all over the city. People who have proven they’ll help a stranger in need, time and time again. 

But someone like Jensen?  I can’t let myself get to know him. When I looked up and saw him watching me, my heart promptly flopped into my shoes. Love at first site is pretty much the only option open to me, and damn, if it didn’t hit me hard with him. I should probably leave the museum for the day, because chances are I’ll run into him a couple more times as we wander around the galleries and I know better than to put myself through that. 

On the other hand, I _want_ to see him again, see that dazzling smile, hear his slightly strange way of talking. I want to ask him what he thinks of other paintings here. Find out which is his favorite. I know it will hurt, but it might be worth it to spend some time in the company of someone whose smile makes me warm all through. 

So, to heck with common sense and self-preservation. I’ll leave it up to fate. I’ll go my way, and if I just happen to cross his path again, so be it. 

I find him an hour later in front of _Still Life with a Bottle of Rum_ by Picasso. Okay, so it’s all together possible that I pretty much stopped looking at art pretty early on and started looking for a sandy blond head. Sue me. It’s my own heart I’m playing games with so I don’t need to apologize to anyone. 

I’ve come up behind him, he doesn’t notice me watching him sketching the painting. He’s pretty good, somehow capturing the essence of this really complex painting with just a few simple stark lines. I come around and sit on the bench next to him, pretending to be looking at the painting.

He looks up at me and his face lights up, the full deal, sparkling green eyes, freckles and all. Yeah. I have it bad. 

“Hey,” he says. “What about this one?”

I’m a little distracted, because there’s something about the expression on his face that I can’t quite figure out. “Excuse me? What about what one?”

“Well, it’s not a woman we’re remembering, but a moment. A moment in Picasso’s mind that he’s daring us to decipher.”

My chest is doing something extremely alarming. It’s like my heartbeat has been magnified so that it fills up everything in me, because I realize that he’s picking up the conversation where we left off over an hour ago. The look on his face that I couldn’t figure out was _recognition._

As in, he recognizes me. 

He remembers me. 

He remembers me. 

_ Jensen  _

Well, shit. Somehow, I’ve really blown it. That expression on Jared’s face?  I don’t know what it is, but it’s not good. All these things at once, like he’s surprised, but might cry. Maybe he’s a little bit scared too, yeah, that looks like it’s mixed in there, but the thing that really makes it all out of place is how _intense_ it is. He looks like he might grab me for a second and every muscle in my body tenses. 

But then he takes a deep breath and sits back. He blows the breath slowly back out. “Okay,” he says quietly, so I think maybe he’s just saying it to himself, “okay.” 

He’s looking at me so intensely, I have to look back at the painting. “There’s so many things in it at once,” I say, “like he’s scared he can’t capture it all.”

Jared is looking at the painting now, but it doesn’t seem like he’s really seeing it. “You said you had autism,” he says, “what does that mean?  Like, I know what it means in general, but what does it mean for you?”  

I like this, actually. It’s so much easier when someone asks rather than sit there and have all these questions about me that fill their mind so much they can’t really pay attention to me. I pick up my pencil and start sketching again. “For me,” I say, “it means that a lot of the social things that you think and do automatically, I have to do on purpose. A lot of things that you see through a social filter, I see for what they are, without some of those extra layers of meaning on them.”

“I never had a friend on the spectrum before,” Jared says. “If I say or do something wrong, just tell me. That would be okay with me.”

I stare at my paper, hard, trying to figure out if I’m misunderstanding what he just said. _I’ve never had a friend on the spectrum before._ Is it that easy with him?  We’re friends?  Dad says a friend is someone that you can totally be yourself with, and who you accept for who they are. Dad has this friend who’s a conservative republican and even voted for that obnoxious guy the last election, and they’re still friends even though Dad volunteers at the Democratic Party Headquarters every November. It seems like it would be a lot easier to be friends with Jared. So, alright. 

“You won’t do anything wrong,” I say, and move my pencil across the paper again. 

“What was that you said about not forgetting things, you know, earlier when we were talking?”

“Stuff just stays in my brain. I don’t know.” I fidget with my pencil. I’m done this painting. I want to move onto the next. Last time I asked him if he wanted to hang out with me, he said no, but it seems like something has changed. 

“I’m going to my next painting now,” I say. I tear my eyes up from my sketch book and meet Jared’s eyes for a moment. It’s really just a quick check in, but I still notice how interesting they are, all like a kaleidoscope. “Would you like to come with me?  I know you said before that—”

“I’d love to,” he interrupts. “I’m sorry about before. I— I thought I had to do something.”  

There it is again, and this time, I have no doubt. He’s lying. That’s okay, I know sometimes other people lie to be polite, which seems like a contradiction to me, but it happens. 

We stand and he follows my lead towards gallery 823, home of the Van Gogh's. 

Now that I’m thinking about him lying, I can’t help but keep on wondering about his lie earlier. “What did you say to the docent when you were going into the special exhibit?” I blurt out. I can’t help it. I can’t move forward with our conversation until I know, because the space that big question takes up is starting to crowd out everything else. 

“You saw me then?” he asks.

“Yes, I noticed you because I saw you skip the line this morning and then…” I trail off. It’s probably not polite to tell him I thought it looked like he was lying. “You’re not supposed to skip the line,” I say, and then realize that’s probably not polite, either.

Jared stops walking and his eyes search my face, studying. I’m just about to tell him that it makes me uncomfortable when he starts walking again. “I can’t afford to pay, what’s the point of standing in line?”  

This is what I was thinking about him earlier. Why doesn’t he care about what he’s supposed to do? 

“It’s for the same reason that people say “bless you” when someone sneezes. It’s one of the things that helps everyone get along. Also, it’s so the security camera gets a good picture of you, straight on, that way if you steal a painting or vandalize something, it’s easier to catch you.” 

“I promise I won’t steal any paintings,” he says. 

“I’m serious though. You are supposed to stop and give a polite quarter. And you didn’t answer my question about what you said to the docent at the special exhibit.” 

Jared has stopped walking again, and he reaches out his hand to take my wrist to stop me from walking and make me face him. His fingers are long and delicate, and surprisingly cold. Everything about him looks like he should run hot, all this frenetic nervous energy jittering under the surface. “It doesn’t matter, does it?  They never remember me. All this time, it’s never hurt anyone. Why—”

Something he just said doesn’t make sense, but it takes me a moment to figure out what it is. “What do you mean, ‘all this time?’  You do that a lot?  Doesn’t the docent get suspicious?”

He cuts his eyes away then, and tugs my wrist a little. “Let’s keep going,” he says. 

I walk, but I know he didn’t answer my question. “Well,” I ask, “how many times?  Is it a different docent each time?  Have you ever been caught?”

“No,” he says, “I’ve never been caught.”  He looks at me out of the corner of his eye, a mischievous grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember. Not every day, but a lot.”  

“I come every day in the summer,” I say. “My dad’s the curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.”  

“That must be cool,” he says. 

It is really. I’m not one of those kids who’s thinks their parents are dorks just on principle. My father knows more about art than anyone I know, and art is my favorite thing in the world. My mom used to be a lawyer, but she left her firm when she had me. More specifically, when she found out that I was going to be a lot of work. Then taking care of me was her full time job. Now that I don’t have so many appointments and therapy groups and at home behavior therapy and all that, she has a different job; she is a parenting coach for families with children who have autism. That’s not as cool as being a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but it’s a very nice thing for her to do. And she’s the one who gets my jokes and knows when to back off and when to give me help. And that’s really the best thing of all. 

“Did I lose you there?” Jared asks. 

“No, I’m right here.”

“I mean, what were you thinking about just now?”

This is what is so exhausting about being with neurotypical people. I was thinking about my parents, of course, that’s what we were just talking about. I don’t really get why a conversation has to be talk, then listen, then talk then listen. It doesn’t leave any time to think about anything that you’re saying. Like a little while ago, Jared said he didn’t have a mother or father and I haven’t had time to think about it. And I still don’t understand how he can pull the same trick day after day and no one has ever caught on. I know most of the docents. Walter is the one he lied to this morning, and he’s not dumb. I don’t get it. 

“I’m thinking about all the things you said. I haven’t met anyone new in a long time, it’s kind of a lot.”  

“I’m sorry,” Jared says. “I actually haven’t met anyone new in a long time either.”

++++++++

_ Jared  _

I’ve spent a lot of time in my life imagining what it would be like to live like normal people. I’ve imagined going to school, having a boyfriend, having a job. Someday, having children, all those really huge, totally normal things that there’s no way I can do. 

I don’t spend a lot of time feeling sorry for myself about it, because there’s a lot of things I can do that regular people can’t. For example, last year, I went to Disney World. It took a lot of observation to figure out how to get in, but once I did, I went every day for as long as I felt like it. 

But I can’t help it if sometimes I feel a little lonely, if sometimes I think it’s just unfair, and let my imagination go wandering. 

I’ve never, in all that time, imagined this situation, because it never occurred to me that it might happen. I have no plan whatsoever and a million questions are zinging around in my brain. How long will this last?  Is it just Jensen, or could it be anybody?  I’m dying to test it out, but I don’t want to leave Jensen, because this is the best, best thing that has ever happened to me and I don’t want it to end. And even with all of that going on, I’m still interested in _him._

We stand in front of The Shoes, by Van Gogh, and he’s got this sketchbook full of his drawings of this painting. Full. 

“That reminds me of Monet’s cathedral paintings, how he did so many of the same thing,” I say, and Jensen puts on this smile that just knocks me over.

“Exactly!” he says. “That’s what gave me the idea. Only instead of the light being different each time he painted it, _I’m_ different each time I draw it. Different day, different mood, different weather. Sometimes I’m hyper focused, sometimes I’m thinking about something else.”

He pulls a different sketchbook out of his satchel, and that one is full of sketches of the very painting I had just named. This is starting to feel like a surreal dream. 

It turns out, we like a lot of the same paintings. I guess that’s not so weird, because they are all amazing, of course. Who doesn’t like _Sunflowers_?  That would be the weird thing. 

“It’s funny we’ve never bumped into each other before,” I comment. “I’m not here every day like you, but I’m here a lot.” I don’t say so, but I definitely would have noticed and remembered Jensen if I had ever seen him before. 

“It’s like the grocery store,” he says. “Sometimes, at the grocery store, you start out at the same time as someone else, and then you keep seeing them in the aisles, all the way through the store. But someone else who started just a couple minutes ahead of you is always going to be a couple aisles ahead of you and you probably wouldn’t even know they were there. The museum is big, more than two million square feet. It’s much more surprising that we’ve crossed paths three times today than it is that we’ve never crossed paths before.”

He pulls a couple pencils out of his satchel. “Do you mind?” he asks. 

“No,” I say. “I’d love to watch if it doesn’t make you nervous.”

He sketches standing up, right there in the middle of the gallery. After a few moments, it’s like he’s completely tuned me out, and everything else around us. His eyes move back and forth between the painting and his sketch, but it seems like his hand is acting on its own, getting the signal directly from his brain where to go over the page. The way he draws this is completely different from the way he was drawing the Picasso, long, connected lines rather than short choppy ones. 

Now that we’re not talking, my head starts filling with questions, loud and urgent. Do I dare test this?  Could I bear it if I went away and this was gone?  I’m going to have to try, because it’s not like I can follow Jensen home, clinging to him like a stray puppy. And if he doesn’t remember me, well then that’s what I was expecting I’d have to deal with anyway when I let myself look for him. 

“Jensen, I… uh, need to use the bathroom. Will you be here for a while? Will you…” the words get stuck in my throat, and for a minute I’m afraid I might start crying. “Will you wait for me here?”

He doesn’t look up from his sketch, but he nods and says, “Yes, of course.”

Because for him, it’s that easy. For me, it’s one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever done. I take a deep breath, then six steps away. I pause at the entrance to the next gallery, my heart in my throat and look back at him. Dressed in loose fitting khakis and a grey t-shirt, he could be any average teenage boy. But he’s not. He’s the one single person in all of my memory who could get to know me. I think again of Maslow and the need to be loved and belong. The pull of that need has never been stronger than it is at this moment, but I _have_ to know. I have to know if this will last. I have to know if the nightmare is over for me. I step out of the gallery. 

Okay. I’ll make this fast. The time it takes to walk down to the information desk, one five-minute loop around, back to the information desk, and then back to Jensen and the Van Goghs. 

It was true, what I had told Jensen. I don’t come to the museum every day, but I come here a lot. The hushed, echoing galleries and the muted colors, graceful arches of the place are very soothing to me. On occasion, I spend the night here, like Claudia and Jamie in _The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler._ Only, I don’t sleep in the State Bed. That thing is musty and smells like dust. Plus, I don’t really sleep when I spent the night. It’s more about looking at the collection with no people around. It’s not that I think I deserve some special privilege not afforded to ordinary mortals, it’s just that I know I wouldn’t ever do any harm to anything here, and if there’s never any trace of me, then why not? 

The point being, I know my way around the museum without a map, and I know which of the staff are friendly, and which are all business. Stell, at the information desk is friendly. She’s the one they always call on to hang with the lost kids. Her curly grey hair and grandmotherly smile puts them at ease. 

She looks up expectantly when I approach. “May I help you?”

My hands are trembling, so I jam them into my pockets and concentrate on making my voice come out steady. “Can I ask you a strange favor?” I ask.

“Well, that depends, what is it?”  She has a wary look in her eye, but she’s still smiling. 

“I’d like to leave a note with you, and I’d like you to give it back to me when I come back later today.”

“A note?”  she asks, puzzled. 

“I have a memory disorder,” I say. “I’ll be lucky if I remember to come back and get it at all, but it would really help me if you just held onto it for me until I come back.”

She holds out her hand for the note. I hang onto it for just an extra moment longer, long enough for her to look up at me questioningly. I want to make sure she really sees me. I try not to look like a complete psycho. 

I’ve tested this before. How long it takes. It varies only slightly from person to person, but five minutes usually does it. Believe it or not, I’m actually incredibly grateful for those five minutes. Imagine if people forgot me the instant they turned their back on me. What if it happened in the blink of an eye?  

Five minutes is enough time to take a quick trip through the Egyptian wing, and the whole time, I’m fretting about Jensen. Maybe I should run back up and check in with him. What if he’s forgotten me?  What if he hasn’t? But oh, God, what if Stell hasn’t forgotten me either?  What if this is over?  I swear, I will run through this museum screaming with happiness, and everyone will go home and tell their families about how there was a crazy man at the museum today. It will be awesome. 

I can tell by the look on her face as I approach that Stell does not remember me. It’s open and expectant and completely devoid of recognition. I have to go through with my ruse anyway, maybe just a little nudge will trigger her memory. 

“Can I help you?” she asks, smiling. 

“I left a note with you earlier,” I say. “I asked you to give it to me when I came back. Do you have it?” 

Stell frowns. “Are you sure it was me?”  She looks down at the counter in front of her. “Tawny?” she asks the other girl behind the desk, “did you take a note for this boy?” 

Tawny looks up at me and snaps her gum. “Nope,” she says. Stell gives a side-eye of annoyance. 

“I’m really sorry, honey. If you did leave a note, I don’t remember. When Nancy gets back from her lunch break, I’ll ask her. Check back later, okay?”

“Sure.”  I nod thanks and walk away quickly, heart racing and flirting with the _no running in the museum_ rule because now I’m scared, no, make that terrified that this morning with Jensen has been just a fluke, a glitch in the universe’s regularly scheduled program for me. If he doesn’t remember me when I get back, then this has been a really, really cruel joke. 

Carlos warns me to slow down as I round a corner too fast. I may be too slippery to stay in his memory, but it doesn’t mean that I’m invisible. _Breathe,_ I tell myself. If Jensen has forgotten me, getting there any faster isn’t going to change that. 

I turn the corner, and I see him standing there, just as I left him. Same soft t-shirt, same tousled tawny hair. He’s completely absorbed in the painting in front of him, and its suddenly completely obvious how we’ve never noticed each other in the museum before. I have the feeling that unless I spoke to him, like I did this morning, or walked directly between him and the painting, I could be doing the can-can in an inflatable sumo wrestler suit right next to him and he’d never notice. For my part, I wouldn’t otherwise bother someone who was so totally absorbed in their work. 

A strange thought occurs to me. It’s possible that I have seen Jensen before, standing just like this, and _I’m_ the one who forgot _him._ I pass by thousands of people on the street every day, and there’s not room enough in my mind to remember all of them. I step closer, and wait. If he doesn’t remember me, I don’t even want to start a conversation with him. I will just walk away. Painful as that might be, better to have it over with than to start it all over again. 

Like he had with the Picasso painting, he’s admirably captured the spirit of this painting with only a few well-placed contour lines. I wonder if the same thing could be done in reverse; create watercolors of sketches. I wonder if Jensen does any original art, or if it’s all this sort of pencil-line homage that he does. I step a little closer.  Nothing. 

Deep breaths to pacify my heart, to barricade my devastation behind a wall of calm. It was nice while it lasted. I just wish it could have been real. A step closer, slightly up in front of him now. _Please,_ I think. _Just, please_. 

Fine. It’s fine. Two hours ago, I was moving along in my life, surviving and even having fun from time to time, and nothing has changed. Nothing. So I’m just going to walk away and—

“Are you hungry?” Jensen asks. “I know you said earlier that you didn’t want to get a cup of coffee, but that was almost two hours ago. We could have lunch together.” 

He sneaks a quick glance at me, then back again to his drawing. I can only hope that it’s not long enough to actually see the expression on my face, because I am sure that I look like a complete train wreck. That’s how I feel inside anyway. Every muscle from my calves to my ass is trembling and threatening to lay down on the job. My face seriously doesn’t even know what to do. Smile?  Cry?  I have no idea. 

“Maybe you still don’t want to. I’m sorry. I just don’t know how to do this and when you were away just now, it kind of sucked thinking that you might have just ditched me and I had no idea. I don’t have a lot of friends.”

He says it like it’s no big deal. Just a fact of life, and it hurts. I look at his achingly beautiful face, with that spattering of freckles over his nose and all the talent he’s toting around in his bag and think to myself that the world is a really fucking stupid place. 

“That’s okay, then. I won’t ask ag—”

“No! I mean, yes, I’d love to get lunch with you.” 

That smile again. It helps me pull myself together, and my face remembers how to smile too. 

++++++++

_ Jensen _

Something occurs to me as we’re walking to the café. I’m not really sure that I did this right. I’m not sure guys ask other guys out to lunch. I replay the words I used in my head, and it sounds an awful lot like the script that I’ve run with my therapist about asking a girl out on a date. 

Is it a date?  It’s a date, right?  Yes. We’re at a museum and I’m going to take him to lunch. That’s a date. Unless when we get there, and he wants to pay and then it might just be friends. And normally, two guys are just friends. But I want it to be a date, because… I don’t know. Just because. So I ask. 

“Can this be a date?”

He laughs, the nice kind of laugh, which is great because for the past few minutes, I really have no idea what kind feelings he’s having, and I’ve been insecure wondering if I’m doing everything wrong. I want to go back to just talking about art. Or maybe talking about him. He’s said a lot of interesting things, and there’s something different about him and I want to work out what it is. 

“Yes, I think that would be awesome,” he says. “I’ve actually never been on a date before. Better strike while the iron’s hot.”  

That’s an idiom. It means take advantage of an opportunity before you miss your chance. This is actually really good advice. I pack my pencil and sketchbook away. “My favorite is the American Wing Cafe. Is that okay with you?”

“I—I usually eat at the Trie. But that might be nice for a change. Thanks.”

We walk along, and the things I want to know about him grow bigger and bigger in my mind. I think I’m not going to be able to talk to him about other things, because I can only think about these questions. “Is it okay if I ask you some things?” 

“You can try,” he says. What the heck does that mean? I can’t really spend the time trying to put those words in context, because my questions are taking up more and more space in my mind and I have to get them out of the way.

“You don’t look like you’re homeless,” I say, and then realize that it’s not a question, even though it’s several of my questions wrapped in one thought. “I mean, where do you sleep and eat and get dressed?  You don’t look like the other people I see at the shelter.”

Jared doesn’t answer for a while, which I like. It means he’s thinking about what he wants to say instead of just blurting out everything, talking just to fulfill the turn-taking convention of having a conversation. People say a lot of meaningless stuff just because it’s their turn to talk. 

“I don’t have the greatest answer to that,” he says, “but I’d rather be honest than lie because I’m embarrassed about my answer. You know how I explained how I got into the special exhibit without paying?  I have a lot of… strategies for that sort of thing. I slept in a hotel last night, and I ate breakfast at a diner. I do make a little money, and I pay what I can when I can. But when I can’t, I find other ways.”

“Are you saying that you steal?”  It’s interesting, because I wouldn’t expect someone who breaks the law to just come out and talk about it. But that fits with what I was thinking about him earlier on the steps. It’s like he doesn’t care how people are going to react to him. 

“I wouldn’t if I didn’t have to.”

Again. He’s not saying it defensively, just like it’s a matter of fact. I can’t imagine feeling like it was a _fact_ that I _had_ to steal and cheat. Or even lie. I am a terrible liar. “I don’t lie,” I tell him. 

“I lie all the time,” he says, and then, “but I will try not to with you.”

“What do you mean, ‘try?’  You either lie or you don’t. It’s not like trying to run a mile, or trying to draw a perfect circle. Just don’t say things that aren’t true.”

“I haven’t had a lot of practice with that,” he says. 

“Are you an orphan?  What happened to your parents?” A part of me inside knows this isn’t the nicest question to ask, but if he’s going to come right out and say how he lies and steals, then I’m going to come right out and ask the things that I really want to know.

He doesn’t seem to mind though. “I lost my mother when I was really young, about the time I started school. I don’t remember my father. I had trouble staying in foster homes. Eventually, it worked out that I did better on my own.”

“Are you lying?”  

“No.”

“How will I know?”

“You won’t, you’ll just to have to trust me.”

“Do you go to school?”

“No.”

I steal a glance at him. I might be asking things that are too personal. But he told me that he lies. That’s such a big thing to say, I don’t see how anything else could be too much. “I mean, can you read?”

“Oh!  Yes, I can read. I’m sort of home-schooled in that department.”

“How can you be homeschooled if you’re homeless?”

“There was a lady at one of the homeless shelters I lived at for a while. She taught me at first, but after a while, she wasn’t there any more, and I worked on it myself. I think maybe my mother taught me a little before she was gone.”  

We’re at the Cafe. It’s hard for me to run through everything I know I should be doing, this being a date, because I’m still trying to fit the things he said into some sort of person shape that makes sense. He gets his own tray and moves into the line and doesn’t seem to be acting like I’m being rude, so I do the same. I look at his hands, fingers wrapped around the edge of his tray. Soft and clean. If I were close enough, they’d probably smell like that almond soap they have here in all the bathrooms. 

“Did you really go to the bathroom when you left me?” I ask. 

He looks up at me, startled. “No,” he says. And then, “I went to the information desk.”  I’m still adding up in my head the amount of time that it would have taken to go to the information desk and back, and maybe he can see it in my face because he adds, “and I walked around the Egyptian wing.”

That is not what you would expect someone to do when you just met them and it seems like you are getting along, and they say they are going to the bathroom. So he must have an unexpected reason for doing that, but he doesn’t say what. I am going to have a hard time sleeping tonight, because he keeps getting bigger and bigger in my mind. Maybe that’s why he’s so tall, to make room for all this stuff. All this Jared-ness. I thought that asking him questions would help make him make more sense, but the opposite is happening. Suddenly, I’m tired and overwhelmed. I’m on a date. This was not in my schedule. I don’t know if he’s going to want to continue walk around with me after we eat and I know the polite thing will probably be to ask what parts of the museum he wants to see, but that will pull me even further off my schedule. 

“I’m nervous,” I say. That helps. 

“Because of me?” he puts a Three Sisters Salad on his tray. 

“Because I don’t usually do well with changes to my schedule, and you were definitely not on the schedule today.”

The staff at the café know me. Tina, the girl with the piercing in her nose says hi and goes back to the kitchen to get my sandwich. This is exactly what I am nervous about. Normally, there wouldn’t be anyone with me to notice that they make me a special sandwich here with only one kind of meat and no sesame seeds on the bun. Normally, I just get my sandwich and sit down and eat it. But Jared notices. 

“They know you here?” he says. 

“My dad is a curator. I come here nearly every day.”  Tina hands me my sandwich and looks back and forth between me and Jared, a big, expectant smile on her face. I’m probably supposed to introduce Jared, so I do. “Tina, this is my friend, Jared. Jared, this is Tina who works here.”  I mentally add this introduction to the list of things I will be telling my parents at supper tonight. I personally would like to sit at the dinner table and eat my food and say something if I have something to say. But according to my mom, dinner time is an important time to socialize, so I have to think of things to say even if I just feel like eating. It’s good to have a couple things stored up in my mind so I can just say them and then eat in peace. 

Tina smiles and both she and Jared say “nice to meet you,” like they’re supposed to, but I can’t help but feel like Jared says it in a kind of sad way. His words are polite, and he has a smile on but his voice sounds wrong and this is why it’s so hard for me to understand people. 

I wonder if Jared is going to want to talk while we are eating. My sandwich is plain and familiar, and he is not. Thankfully, he sits down and starts eating without fussing about anything like saying grace, or waiting for me to start eating before he does. My chest loosens a little, and I start eating too, for the moment, just enjoying the plain white bread and ham and cheese and no one telling me that I should have some vegetables, which frankly, is my favorite thing about eating lunch at the museum instead of home. 

After a while, he puts down his fork and asks, “You said you had a schedule. Do you have the same schedule every day?”  

“Mostly, except for a block in the middle of the day when I am supposed to see something new. 

“Don’t you like seeing new things?  I try and come to all the new special exhibits.”

“The special exhibits bother me. If I don’t like them, I feel like it took time away from my favorite things. If I do like a piece in a special exhibit, all I can think about is how it won’t be here forever, and then I can’t decide if I should spend extra time in the special exhibit, because then that takes time away from my favorite things.”

I try not to watch as he takes a bite of his salad. All those things mixed together, corn, beans, squash, lettuce, dressing. I know I can’t say anything. I know I’m not supposed to feel this way. I look out the window over his shoulder. I feel like I am really blowing all of this. Over something as stupid as lunch. First he sees me get my plain sandwich and then I go and spout off on my schedule, and now I can barely tolerate sitting at the same table as him as he eats. Ok, but fine. This is who I am. I’m trying to tolerate him and his lies and his weird life and his salad. He can try and tolerate me, right?

The crazy thing is, I really want this, and that’s new for me. In the past, I’ve seen girls that I thought were pretty, but my discomfort around them outweighed my interest in their prettiness. Now, here’s this boy, and my discomfort about him is bigger than anything I’ve felt in a while, and I still want to be with him enough to try and ignore a salad with corn and beans.

“Does it bother you?” I ask. “The way I am?”  Because to me, it feels like my autism must be all he can see. I feel like I’m out of control of what I’m saying and thinking just when it’s most important to be in control. 

He looks at me then, and his eyes are prettier than a girl’s, which is a strange thing for me to think, but it kind of makes me think about how an artist might see them, so I concentrate on looking at the way the darker blue and brown colored flecks change the whole color of his eye, instead of thinking about all the stuff that him looking at me means.

“Absolutely not,” he says. “I am not lying, not even exaggerating, when I say that you are the single most interesting person I have ever met.”

Well. That’s something. 

++++++++

_ Jared _

I am a little bit worried about the idea that I took advantage of Jensen today. I’m not sure there is another person this could have happened with who I could follow around all day and just stand there and think about what the heck this all means without them getting freaked out. 

To be fair, I think he was a little freaked out anyway, but oddly, not because I was hanging around with him and not behaving normally. He did this thing where he would tap his forehead with his knuckles, and if you saw him doing it only once, you might just think it was him thinking hard about something, but I saw him do it a lot, and saw him trying _not_ to do it a lot, and it got to be my signal for knowing when he was getting overwhelmed by me, and I’d just go get a drink of water or something. 

Saying goodbye to him at the end of the day was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do because I just want to follow him around and be remembered when I come back from the bathroom forever. That’s pretty pathetic. 

Like I said, I have fantasized a lot about being normal, and what that might be like. But I never pictured this particular scenario. I’d usually just imagine that I was normal, and always had been normal. And of course, in those fantasies, _everyone_ remembered me like a normal person. The possibility of just one person remembering me never occurred to me. It brings up a whole new set of problems. Say I meet Jensen again tomorrow, and we go to lunch again. Isn’t he going to think it’s weird that Tina at the counter doesn’t know me?  Tina has served me lunch more times than I can count, and she’s never remembered me, and she’s not going to remember me, no matter how many times Jensen introduces us. 

The reality of me would be hard enough for a regular person to take in, but what about someone for whom regular reality is a little overwhelming to begin with?

Speaking of people for whom reality is difficult, I am staying at a shelter tonight. I am a connoisseur of homeless shelters, really. I’ve been in more than my fair share, way more. And here’s something you might not expect. Some of the people who work in homeless shelters can be real assholes to the homeless. I think I get why; some of them are two steps away from being homeless themselves, and that’s a lot of stress. Imagine the thing you’re most worried about, and imagine you work in your worst case scenario worry. 

Most are staffed with pretty decent human beings however, and some are staffed by the sort of people that you read about in _Readers Digest_. Regular angels on earth. Take Winifred, the lady who serves dinner at the Samaritan Inn on Lexington Avenue. She’s not just slinging food onto our plates, she makes you feel like she cares about every single one who comes through the line. 

“Hey baby doll, you hungry tonight?” she asks me. “I made the green beans myself. You need to eat your vegetables. Growing boy like you.”

I smile, thinking that she’d never imagine the salad I had for lunch. And that makes me think about how nervous Jensen was, and how hard he was trying. 

“Hey, that’s a gorgeous smile. You keep that up. Whatever your deal is, you’ll get through it, honey.”

“Thank you Winifred,” I say, without thinking. This is a mistake I often make, referring to people by their name even though in their minds, I shouldn’t know it. 

Her brow knits together, trying to work out how I might know her. I leave it. She’ll eventually just find a way to explain it to herself, or forget about it. I take my green beans, along with a baked chicken thigh and instant rice to a table. 

Green Alice is sitting at the table already. She eyes me suspiciously as I sit down. I know from experience that she doesn’t like strangers, which by definition includes me, but that she’s basically harmless. 

“What’s your story?” she asks, her voice as sour green as the clothes she wears. “Have a fight with Mommy and Daddy?”

In general, this is the typical attitude I get at shelters, which is why I don’t stay in one every night. Jensen was right, I don’t look like I belong in a shelter. I’m not trying to be snobby, this is just the way it is. For one thing, this is the only life I’ve ever known, so spending the night in the shelter is usually something I planned on, something I’m used to. I’m not ashamed, disappointed, sad or crazy, which, if you look around this place, is what you see on the majority of the faces. 

The other thing is my clothes. I used to shoplift all the time and not think too much about it. I justified it by thinking that my life was really hard and that I had no other way of getting clothes, so it was just something I had to do. Then when I was thirteen, I read _The Stand,_ by Stephen King. In that book, there’s a character who’s in prison when the apocalypse happens, and everyone dies and there’s no one left to let him out of his cell. I won’t get into the gory details, but what happens to him is pretty bad. Ever since then, I have a morbid fear of getting caught for something that could send me to jail, even overnight. Because getting forgotten in a restaurant is one thing, getting forgotten in a jail cell is another. 

So I buy my clothes, it’s one of the things that I save my money for. I take care to buy really well-made, rugged clothes that will last me a long time, and I care for them very well. I could get my clothes from the Salvation Army or the shelters or from the dumpster behind the Target in Queens, but honestly, I don’t need to, and it’s hard enough for me to get around in this world with some dignity without having to do it dressed in cast off t-shirts and bad fitting jeans. 

I don’t really want to talk tonight, I want to think. I want to think about everything that happened today and just wrap myself up in the memory of Jensen. His smile, his voice, his nervousness. His skillful long fingers flying over the page of his sketchbook. The awkward good-bye, where I just wanted to throw my arms around him and thank him so hard for being the miracle that he doesn’t know he is, and how he looked so terrified that I just smiled like an idiot instead, and watched him walk away, and then I was the one who was terrified. 

And then, I have to plan tomorrow. I asked Jensen if he would be at the museum again, and if I could see him. He said yes and took a photocopied page out of his notebook and handed it to me. When he’d said before that he had a schedule, I was picturing something like, statuary in the morning, then impressionists, lunch, then modern art in the afternoon. I had no idea. I pull the paper out of my pocket now. 

10:00 to 10:05 Wait in line   
10:05 to 10:10 Walk to _The Portal_. Gallery 819   
10:10 to 10:30 Sketch _The Portal_   
10:30 to 10:45 Use second floor bathroom near special exhibits   
10:45 to 10:50 Walk to _La Carmencita_. Gallery 999   
10:50 to 11:10 Sketch _La Carmencita_   
11:10 to 11:15 Walk to _Still Life with Bottle of Rum_. Gallery 822   
11:15 to 11:35 Sketch _Still Life with Bottle of Rum_   
11:35 to 11:40 Walk to _Shoes_. Gallery 823   
11:40 to 12:00 Sketch _Shoes_   
12:00 to 12:05  Walk to American Café   
12:05 to 12:25 Eat Lunch   
12:25 to 12:30 Walk to Expressions exhibit. Gallery 691   
12:30 to 12:55 Expressions Exhibit, sketching optional   
12:55 to 1:00 Walk to _Two Tahitian Women_. Gallery 826   
1:00 to 1:20 Sketch _Two Tahitian Women_   
1:25 to 1:40 Use second floor bathroom near special exhibits   
1:40 to 1:45 Walk to _Pasiphae_. Gallery 913   
1:45 to 2:05 Sketch _Pasiphae_   
2:05 to 2:25 Sketch _Dutch Interior_ , also in Gallery 913.    
2:25 to 2:30 Walk to _The Beeches_. Gallery 759   
2:30 to 2:50 Sketch _The Beeches_   
2:50 to 2:55 Walk to _Cow Skull, Red White and Blue_. Gallery 900   
2:55 to 3:00 Sketch _Cow Skull Red, White and Blue_   
3:00 to 3:05 Walk to _Ceiling Painting from the Palace of Amenhotep III_   
3:05 to 3:25 Sketch _Ceiling Painting from the Palace of Amenhotep III_   
3:30 to 3:35 Walk to _The Glorification of the Hungarian Saints_. Gallery 622   
3:35 to 3:55 Sketch _The Glorification of the Hungarian Saints_   
3:55 to 4:00 Walk to exit of museum. 

It was the exact schedule that we had followed after lunch. He really did sketch all those paintings, and he really does do it every day. I asked him why he did the same ones over and over, and he’d said that every single time he sketched one, it was different, because _he_ was different. He said for the rest of his life, he’d always be able to know which were the sketches that he had done that afternoon with me, because he was more different that day than he’d ever been. 

“Yo. Mr. Dreamy. What you got to smile about?  Eh?”  Green Alice again. Green Alice is not particularly nice, but she’s interesting. 

“Daydreaming about a boy,” I say. I really never, ever have to get embarrassed. Think about it. 

“My last husband, he was my seventh, you know, was an alligator wrestler at Gatorworld in Florida. That’s why I wear all green. He was an animal in the sack.”

“Is that so?” I say, as if I hadn’t heard this story several times already. The details never vary, so I suspect she’s actually telling the truth. Hey, someone’s got to work at Gatorworld, right?

“The point is, you can day dream all you want, but when you find that one special man, you gotta go at it like white on this rice.”  She waves her hand at me, fingers splayed just so, as if they are used to holding a cigarette. “Like you’re going to have any trouble. Get your ass out of this hellhole, go home, and go on a date with your boy. Don’t waste my time, mooning around about it. Sheesh.”  

It’s amazing how many times I have to listen to the same conversations. It’s like people have this standard “new person” repertoire that they pull out every time. I really crave something different. Getting to know someone better. Getting beyond the same thing, day after day. 

Which makes me look down at the schedule in my hand. Day after day. What am I getting myself into here?

_ Jensen _

For a while I don’t think I’m going to be able to eat dinner with mother and father. I feel like a steel bearing, held in oscillating stasis between two very powerful magnets, the desire to tell them about my day, and wanting to just take a break from it. I don’t think Jared had any idea how overwhelming it was to meet him, to be with him. To learn about him. I spent the whole train ride home with my knuckles pressed tight against my forehead, trying to keep everything in. 

We live in a brownstone on the Upper East Side, and the walk from the subway station to the house is only a few blocks, not enough for me to get my headspace to shrink down to a manageable size. Mrs. Highsmith’s French boxer barked at me as I went by and the high pitched sound felt like it was poking me in the ear. That didn’t help. 

So when I got home, I put my bag on the hook and went right to my room. I closed the door, which is something my mom isn’t ever completely happy about, but we’ve negotiated my right to do so. I’d like to get in my closet, and close that door too, but I also want to try and see how I can stand this without having to do all these things that other people don’t do, because I really don’t want to blow it with Jared. 

It’s like school. I hate school. I don’t understand how all those kids go to school every day and never question why they have to do it. None of them like math, really, even the ones that are good at it. I do not believe that if you asked any of the people in the world if they would rather do math or watch an episode of Seinfeld, most people would choose watching _Seinfeld_ , even if they didn’t particularly like _Seinfeld_. 

I get that you need to go to school to learn stuff so you can get a job and all that. But every day?  All day?  And learn about all the things?  No one gets a job where both knowing about Alexander Hamilton and how to diagram a sentence are important. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have to go to school. I know that we do. I’m just saying, couldn’t we just talk about it?  Do we really have to just go, and that’s that, and no one gets to ask why or think about other ways we could all grow up and get jobs without having to learn the past imperfect tense of the French verb, _tenir._ It’s just a colossal waste of time. 

Which is the background to my point, which is that I hated school and everything in it, even art, until my freshman year in high school when we started learning art history. It’s like, all this time at school, my brain was like a big building with long, boring hallways full of doors that were shut. A door that said _math_ , a door that said _literature,_ doors that said _biology, social studies_ and _chorus._ And there was nothing, not a single thing that tempted me to open those doors, and so I hung out in the boring hallways and it was torture, and I didn’t want to do homework or study for tests or even listen to why what was behind those doors was important. But then one day, I found a door marked _art history_ , and I’m not sure what made me want to go in there, but when I did, I found it was crammed full of more interesting things than I ever imagined could exist. I could stay in this room forever. I would never get bored, and I found I actually _liked_ learning about the things in this room, and more than that, I was _good_ at learning about things in this room. I did homework. I studied, I practiced, I opened every closet and cabinet I could find, and still wanted to look for more. 

This is what it’s like with Jared. People do not interest me. You may think that’s weird, but think about yourself for a moment. Think of all the billions of people living on earth that you know nothing about. You might care in the abstract about starving people in Africa, or be interested in watching celebrities on TV, but the actual number of people you personally know and actually care about is an infinitesimal fraction of the actual people living in the world today. My number is smaller than yours, but when compared to the billions of people on the planet, the difference between your number and mine is practically nil. 

I love my mother and father. Of course. And I appreciate my teachers and therapists. At least some of the time. But it’s like walking down those hallways with all the closed doors. I’m just not interested in finding out what’s inside any of them. 

Until today, with Jared. It’s like I’m standing in a doorway of an amazing new room, and I’m not sure how I know, but I do, that I want to go in and learn everything I can about it. But, it’s scary. I think about how much energy and interest I spend in the art history room. Can I really start in on this new room?  The idea of taking time away from my art makes me feel anxious and agitated. But this is what people do, right?  I’m not so out of touch that I don’t _want_ to be “normal.”  It’s just that a lot of this stuff doesn’t come naturally to me. 

There’s one thing that makes me think I can do this though, and that’s this. It’s not like I met Jared at the zoo, or the supermarket, or at a kite flying competition. I met him at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. My favorite place in the world. And we talked about my favorite things in the world, and he actually knew what I was talking about, and if we can have at least some of that, I think I can do this. 

So I’m not going to go in the closet. I’m going to lay here on the bed until mom calls me for supper. And then I’m going to tell them about my day, and hopefully dinner will be something that is reasonably tolerable.

It’s only twenty-three minutes before my mother calls me.

“Coming,” I say. 

When Mom calls us for dinner, Dad and I are supposed to stop whatever we are doing and go directly to the table. It doesn’t matter if what we are doing is much more interesting than whatever mom is serving. It doesn’t matter if it would only take a few more moments to finish something. This is extremely annoying to me. My mom hates when she walks in a wet spot on the floor in her socks. I don’t think if she was reading a book, and I called her to come walk in a wet spot in her socks that she would be really excited to do it right way. So unless she’s making swiss cheese slices for dinner, which I highly doubt, it’s hard to get excited to go to the dinner table.

“Macaroni and cheese, your favorite,” she says when I get to the kitchen. 

This is an incredible exaggeration. Okay, of all the things she makes, macaroni and cheese is something I can actually eat. It does have swiss cheese in it. And she makes this topping out of torn up French bread chunks, because for some reason, she doesn’t seem to notice that French bread is actually just white bread, and I will take white bread any time I can get it. 

“So, how was your day, Jensen?” Dad says as he’s sitting down. 

“Did you go to the _Expressions_ exhibit?” asks Mom. 

People make a big deal in therapy about the _social conventions of a conversation_. And one of the biggest things they drill into your head is _turn taking in conversations._ Which is totally stupid, because no one in real life actually talks like that. If you read a book, and you look at the dialogue, each person has their own lines on the page, one after the other. In real life, if you really listen to how people talk, you would find that they interrupt each other all the time, finish each other’s sentences, talk over the end of each other’s sentences, and do things like my parents just did, which is ask more than one question at once, before you’ve had a chance to answer the first one. 

“I did not go to the _Expressions_ exhibit, because I was having a very unusual day.”  Ha. Answered both questions at once. 

Both my parents freeze, like a cartoon, and stare at me. I feel like I can literally feel their beams of sight pressing into the skin around my eyes. I look out the window. 

My mom is the first to break. “Really,” she says. “What do you mean?”

“I met a boy today, and I took him to lunch at the American Café and then I was too agitated to look at all those faces, so we walked in the rooftop garden instead.”

I think my dad’s mouth is actually, literally hanging open. I can’t look though, because they’re still staring at me. This is incredibly satisfying. My parents say stuff all the time like, “you can do anything you set your mind to Jensen,” or “someday, we’re going to see your name in lights.”  When in reality, they’re both at least a little nervous that I might still be living with them when I’m fifty. The surprise on their faces is evidence of that, and it feels so good to prove them wrong. 

“What boy?  How did you meet?  Is it someone you know from school?”  My mom again, with the multiple questions and complete lack of turn-taking.

“I met him in Gallery 999, looking at _La Carmencita_. I asked him if he wanted to have a cup of coffee, and he didn’t and then I saw him again in 822 while I was sketching _Still Life with a Bottle of Rum_ and I asked him to lunch and he said yes, and he spent the rest of the day with me.”

More shock. 

“Well, what’s his name?  What is he like?” 

“I didn’t know you liked boys,” my dad blurts out. My mom smacks him in the arm. 

I ignore my dad’s comment, because I didn’t really know I liked boys either, in the way that he’s talking about, and I’m still not even sure that’s what this is, and I can’t think about it right now. 

“His name is Jared, he said he chose it himself because he doesn’t have a mother or a father. He knows about art because he taught himself about it in the museum and he didn’t know you had to stand in line and give a polite quarter, even though he never pays because he’s homeless and doesn’t have a lot of money, but I told him you are supposed to, and he said he’ll do it next time.”

This does not have the effect that I expected. I thought they’d be proud of me, like when I got the Parker Award at school for my the end of the year student art exhibit. Instead, they do that thing where they are looking at each other and not saying any words, but I can tell that they are reading each other’s minds or something because they both have the exact same expression on their faces, and it’s not pride. 

“He’s homeless, you say?” Dad asks.

“He didn’t tell you his real name?” Mom says.

“How do you know what his real name is?” I ask back. I’m confused, and the unexpected direction this conversation is taking is making it so that the macaroni and cheese is not worth this aggravation. I press my knuckles into my forehead, but I don’t tap, that just gets Dad stressed too, and I really wish I could figure out how to get this situation back on track, and getting Dad stressed will not help with that. 

“Okay, okay,” mom says, why don’t you start at the beginning, and tell us everything that happened.

I pictured Jared the first time I saw him, on the steps and all of a sudden, I could understand why someone might feel like they need to lie. 

“No.”  I say, and leave the table. 

I go back to my room, and this time, I go into my closet, too. 

++++++++

_ Jared _

The shelter is home for some people. Like me. I sleep just as well in the shelter as I do in a hotel. The only difference is the smell. But for a lot of people, there’s just too much emotional baggage attached to their stay here. Those people don’t sleep. You can hear them trying to get comfortable on their beds. You hear them doing that sort of breathing you do when are trying to relax and sleep, but can’t. Some of them sniffle, some of them outright cry. 

Tonight, I’m getting an extra dose of all that, because for once, I can’t sleep either. I keep thinking about tomorrow. Wondering if Jensen will still remember me. Wondering how I’ll start if this thing is real. Trying and failing to think about what kind of relationship we might have. 

So, okay, there was something there. Something more than just the ‘miracle’ for me. Something more than just how good looking he was. Something that I couldn’t nail to any one particular thing about him, just… something. Something that made my heart glow with warmth one moment and squeeze with fear the next. 

“Settle down over there!” Green Alice hisses at me. In the dark, she’s already forgotten me. In the morning, she’ll wake up one cot over from a total stranger. 

Tomorrow is Tuesday, and it’s supposed to be a sunny, mild day, so that means photography for me. One thing I’ve discovered is that photos that I take persist, as long as I’m not in them. I’m a pretty decent photographer, and so I sell photographs of New York landmarks to tourists in the park, or Greenwich Village. I can make enough money in the morning before the museum opens to get me through the next few days when I add it to the eighty I made dog walking yesterday. 

And then what?  Supposing Jensen does remember me, what next?  Follow him around to his ten paintings all day?  And the next?  I’m not insensitive to what we’re dealing with here, he was very upfront about his autism, it’s just I don’t quite know exactly what that means for _him_. I’ve seen movies and read books with autistic characters. Actually, I don’t think you’re supposed to describe them that way. You wouldn’t describe someone with bad cholesterol as cholesterolemic, you don’t describe someone with autism as autistic. But hey, this is the space in my own head, so I’m going to take the easy way out on that one. 

So anyway, I suspect that those characters are a bit romanticized. All that genius stuff, like Rainman counting the toothpicks. From what I’ve gathered in real life, there’s a reason they call it a spectrum. On one end you’ve got Temple Grandin, and if we’re to believe everything we read, Albert Einstein. On the other, you’ve got kids who can’t speak and flap their hands in distress all the time. 

Jensen’s somewhere in between, I’m sure. From what I’ve seen, he’s not a big fan of changes in his schedule. I’m not sure if he’s interested enough in me to try anything new. I’m not sure what sort of things might upset him. Which, I suppose is the same with any person. The difference is, Jensen is just more than one in a million to me. He is _it_. If I upset him, if I lose him…  Even though I haven’t been able to imagine what a relationship between us would be like, imagining going back to the way my life is alone again is even worse. 

I really have no way of knowing the best way to build something with Jensen without risking losing him, so I’m going to have to go at this the way I do anything in my life; watch, observe, try out some different things, see what works. It’s just that the stakes are so high. 

When I wake in the morning, Green Alice is sitting on her cot, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and dragging her fingers though her tangled blond and grey hair. “Look what the cat dragged in,” she says. “Where’d you come from?”

“Hitchhiked up from Orlando,” I say. “Ran out of money around Maryland. A bit harder to find work up here than I expected.” This fits in perfectly with Alice’s world view, so she just nods and yawns, saving me the boredom of a rant or inquisition. 

Breakfast at the shelter this morning, I have no time for a diner. Oatmeal and toast, and really crappy coffee. I put on an apron and help clean up in the kitchen when I’m done, good karma and all that. 

My different jobs require different uniforms. Comfortable walking pants and shoes for dog walking, artsy scarf and field coat for photography day. I like photography best, because it’s really the most honest work that I do, and I like the idea of little pieces of me going home with all the tourists and finding homes in their scrap books, pinned on their bulletin boards. Even if they’re resigned to the attics, they still wait there, ready to remind the viewer of something _I_ saw once. _Souvenir_. What a lovely word. 

My best spot is in The Village, at the Sunflowers Café. First, it’s a beautiful café with a hook that tourists cannot resist; the outside of the café is decorated with wide swaths of color on the awning, tables and chairs, so that when you are coming at it up the block, it looks like the café in Van Gogh’s painting, _Café Terrace at Night._ Last year, I took some photos of it and had them made into post cards, and I sell just as many of those as I do my regular photographs. 

Tammy, the owner of Sunflowers is picture of a Greenwich Village artisan. Her glorious pile of mousy-blond hair is gathered up and piled on top of her head, threaded with beads and held in place with colorful strips of cloth. She’s got a pale, open face and she believes in the spirit of adventure, at least, that’s what she tells me every time I ask if I can set up my little stand and sell photographs outside her café. Also, she’s wearing a blue Adventure Time t-shirt, which makes me love her even more. 

“The police will come and make you pack up if they see you,” she says. “But you just come back later.”

“Thanks,” I say, “that’s kind of you.”

“Nah,” she says. “I’m just following my bliss. I think everyone has a right to. Your photos are gorgeous.”

I set up, carefully positioning myself in front of the window so that Tammy can see me the whole time she’s working the register. The police don’t even bother me once today, which is nice, because every time I pick up, I can’t just come back and set up again, I have to go back in and introduce myself to Tammy again. 

With no trouble from the police, and Tammy coming out to chat when it’s slow, it takes less time than I thought it would to make my goal amount of sales than I planned, and I’m anxious to pack up and head over to the museum. 

One of these days, I’m going to have to get one of those fitbits, just to see how many steps I put in each day. I’m curious. I walk everywhere because it’s important for me to stay healthy. Doctor’s office visits are not in the cards for me. It scares me to think about my future, as an old man, so I do what I can to try and make sure I stay as healthy as I can for as long as possible. 

No matter what I do, my thoughts keep coming back to this. My future. How my future might be different if I had someone. That’s huge, and it’s a lot to expect of any one person. Never mind someone who has challenges of their own. But just one step at a time. Pun intended. 

I glance at the schedule. Ten thirty five. Jensen will be in the bathroom if I am to believe that he sticks to this schedule as closely as he says. Based on what I saw yesterday, if the schedule says he’s going to be in the bathroom, then he’s going to be in the bathroom. That means I can meet him at _La Carmencita_ , which gives this whole thing a nice little dose of symmetry. I like it, that’s good luck. 

For Jensen’s sake, I wait in line. 

I step up to the desk and hand over one dollar. 

“The recommended admission price is twenty five dollars for adults,” the attendant says. She has big, bouffant hair that she’s dyed black, and bright red lipstick, perfectly applied. 

“I wish to pay one dollar,” I counter. I keep telling myself it’s good karma, which I need all I can get today. I want to see Jensen again so badly, and I’m not going to take any chances. 

The attendant rolls her eyes and waves me in. Not exactly gracious, but hey!  I’m in. 

Up the stairs to _La Carmencita_. I try to enjoy the things I see on the way by. The coolest thing about the museum is that the whole _thing_ is art, not just the paintings or statues or items on display. Go ahead. Google the Metropolitan Museum of Art, then click on “images.”  How beautiful is that building?  The symmetry, the grandeur. You feel like you’re a better person the minute you walk up those steps. And all the little alcoves and places where they’ve tucked pieces of their collection are just everywhere. A marble faun here, and Tiffany stained glass there. 

Because if Jensen doesn’t recognize me, I’m not coming back here for a long, long time. 

If you like short stories, read _The Lady or the Tiger_? by Frank Stockton. It’s not long. It won’t take hardly any of your time at all, but it will stay with you forever. The general idea is that a man fell in love with a girl he was too low-born to ever hope of marrying, and her father finds out. He offers a game in lieu of punishment. The man is to be placed in an arena across from two doors. Behind one is a hungry tiger that will surely rip him to shreds and devour him. Behind the other is a beautiful young girl, who he may take as a wife. All he needs to do is open the correct door. At the last moment, he glances up into the audience, to see the face of the girl he fell in love with one last time, and she gives a nearly imperceptible indication with her finger which door he should chose. The author does a really good job making you question whether she’d rather see her lover torn to shreds or married to another woman. The story ends when the man makes up his mind and opens one of the doors. But you never get to find out which.

At odd times in my life, it comes back to my mind, and I have this feeling that the answer to the riddle exists in the real world somewhere. That time isn’t frozen just before the answer is revealed after all, and if my brain could just reach out a little farther, it could know the truth. 

It comes to my mind today. I stand at the top of the stairs, and the pull of what lies ahead in the gallery with _La Carmencita_ is so strong, and so terrifying, that for a moment I am paralyzed. I have a lifetime of experience telling me that he will not remember me when I enter that gallery. I have a heart full of hope that he will, and no way of knowing unless I put one foot in front of the other and go find out. 

Every muscle in my body feels icy cold and tremulous as I walk forward. With each step, my strength seems to lessen until I need to pause and take some deep breaths. A woman with iron grey curls and a tartan poncho breaks away from her tour group for a moment to ask me if I’m ok. I nod and smile as best as I can and she scurries along to catch up with her group. 

“What are you doing out here?” Jensen asks me. 

I whirl around, my heart jackrabbiting all over the place inside my chest. He’s coming up the stairs behind me, looking slightly puzzled. 

“Out where?” I say, stupidly, because I can’t do what I really want to do, which is to run the last few feet between us and fling myself at him full blast and squeeze so, so hard. 

I went to the library last night and sat on the floor next to the 618 section and pulled down every book they had on autism and asperger, trying to put together a mental field guide. And that was a crap idea because guess what?  People on the autism spectrum are _human_. Which means that you never know what you’re going to get. Maybe Jensen loves hugs and touching. Maybe he hates it. Same as any other person. 

“Outside the gallery. My schedule is _La Carmencita_ at 10:50. Not out here.”

I can’t help it. Tears well up in my eyes. “You’re not in there either,” I point out gently, my voice just coming out as a squeak. 

Jensen ducks his head down, hiding one of his dazzling smiles. “I was looking for you,” he says. “I wasn’t sure you were going to come. Maybe you were just being nice to me yesterday. So I kept checking at the front desk to see if Ellen had seen you come in.”

As he’s talking, Jensen starts moving towards the gallery entrance. He takes my hand as he passes, it’s soft and slightly warm, and he does it totally without a trace of self-consciousness. I squeeze my fingers around his palm and follow him. 

It occurs to me, only a few moments later, that he had changed his schedule for me. And then, the realization of what he was doing hits. 

“Is Ellen the lady at the admissions desk?” I ask.

“One of them,” he says, “the one with the big fake hair.”

“She’s the one I gave my dollar to,” I say, “she probably sees a lot of faces every day, so she probably didn’t remember me.”

“That’s exactly what she said.” He stops, and turns toward me, questioning. “You paid to get in?” he asks. 

“One dollar,” I say, and feel absurdly proud. 

“Well, now we’re even,” he says. “We both changed a little for each other.”

++++++++

_ Jensen _

He has no idea how agitated I actually was, which makes me kind of proud. And also, I’m really, really glad he came back. 

A lot of nice girls do this thing where they act nice because they don’t want to hurt my feelings. Which, as far as I am concerned, is totally stupid. First of all, why would my feelings be hurt if, for example, a girl wasn’t interested in art history?  Lots of people aren’t interested in art history. Lots of people are interested in dinosaurs, and I’m not. There is not a single work of art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art featuring dinosaurs. There is one photograph, a gelatin silver print, but it’s not on display, and it’s not a photo of an actual dinosaur. But you don’t see me going around, worrying that I might be hurting people’s feelings by not being interested in dinosaurs. 

Furthermore, when someone acts like they like you and are nice to you in the library, but then you see them in the cafeteria and they don’t sit next to you or talk to you, they’re still hurting your feelings. I guess the difference is, they would rather hurt your feelings when they don’t have to see it happening. So it’s cowardly, as well as stupid. 

So all morning, I was trying to decide if Jared was like those girls, or if he really might be the type of person who would want to hang out with me. That was hard for me, because I really liked him yesterday, and because I didn’t want my mom and dad to be right.

I know what mom and dad would have said if I stayed at the table last night. They would have done this big talk with me about how sometimes people take advantage of others, and how because of my autism, I might not be able to read the signs that someone was taking advantage of me. Which is pretty typical. I don’t know why it’s so hard for them to believe that I might actually be able to judge someone’s character on my own. I always knew when those girls were just being nice to me in the library. And I notice a _lot_ of little details that other people miss. 

For example. 

“There’s something that’s bothering me,” I say. I rub my thumb over the back of his hand, and his skin is soft. Not like I would picture a homeless person’s skin to be like.

“What is it?” Jared asks me, and his face is so much like the over-exaggerated “worry” face that therapists are always using to teach kids with autism what the expression “worry” looks like that I almost laugh. Almost. I rub my thumb over the back of his hand again.

“I don’t understand why Ellen didn’t recognize you. In the café, she’s always complaining about the cheapskates that don’t pay the full recommended admission price. She definitely would have remembered you if you only paid one dollar.”

“I was wearing different clothes yesterday,” Jared says. “How did you describe me?”  

“I said you were medium handsome with floppy brown hair and brown and amber eyes. That you were my age.” We’re standing in front of _La Carmencita_ , exactly where we had spoken to each other for the first time yesterday. Now that I think about it, it was right around this time, too. 

“I’m sure there are a lot of guys who look like that. Besides, my eyes are not brown and amber. They’re… sort of green?”

I look closely into his eyes. He’s right. Sort of. More like blue and brown mixed together to kind of look like green. “But not many who only paid one dollar.”

“Maybe she was distracted.”

I look hard at Jared. I try to imagine being distracted by something so much that I don’t remember him. I can’t do it. There are not many things in the admissions booth that could distract you. You are only a few feet away from the person on the other side of the window. I know that I have a really good memory, but this seems like something anybody should be able to do. Remember this boy. He’s takes up so much space. He’s so much _there_.

I must be lost in thought, because when I look up, Jared is looking at me expectantly, as if I am supposed to say something. I made a list last night of things we could talk about, because my therapist says that one thing I need to work on is talking about things that other people are interested in, not just what I am interested in. Here’s the list:

1\. Does he have a hobby?   
2\. What does he want to be when he grows up?   
3\. What kind of movies does he like, what is his favorite movie?   
4\. What is his favorite book?  What book does he think I should read?   
5\. Does he have any artistic talent?   
6\. Who is his favorite artist, what is his favorite piece of art?   
7\. Does he ever go to the other museums in New York?   
8\. Why doesn’t he have a mother and father?   
9\. What is it like to be homeless?   
10\. What did he dream about last night?

I am not sure which of these things I should pick. I might have gone over it with my mother, but I’m still pissed at my mother and father for last night. I was worried this morning that they’d want to talk about it some more and so I didn’t want to bring up talking to Jared. Luckily, they didn’t seem to want to talk about it at all, which is weird because mom always wants to talk everything out. But I just kept my mouth shut until I left the house, and that seemed to work. 

So, I do what I often do, which is find a way to randomly select a number. The first number I see will be the number I pick. I realize this is not completely random, because if I see a one, I can only chose one if it is not followed by a zero, which makes one less likely to be chosen than the other numbers, and ten the least likely, but unless I use the random generator app on my phone, it’s the only choice I’ve got, and even I know how dorky it would be to pull out my phone to try and help me chose a topic of conversation. 

Also, I should have realized that eight would be the most likely number, because we are headed for Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century European Paintings and Sculpture, and those galleries all start with eight. 

“Why don’t you have a mother and father?” I ask.

His hand stiffens in mine, and he doesn’t answer for a while. I am not sure if I chose the best out of all the subjects. Random doesn’t always mean the best. But it does prevent you from using bias to select the thing that you secretly want, which in my case were numbers five and six. 

“I don’t know what happened to my father,” Jared says. “I don’t have any memories of him. My mother dropped me off at school one day when I was four and didn’t come back for me.”

“Wh—”

“I don’t know why.”

“But normally, when a kid loses their parents, they get adopted, or put into foster care or something.”

“I did. Foster care, that is, but I never stayed anywhere long, and now I think I’m too old for foster care, I’m not sure, but I think I’m seventeen or eighteen.”

“You’re not sure?”

“I didn’t keep track when I was real little.”

“When’s your birthday?”

“I don’t know.”  

This makes me tap my head. I picture the years as a cylinder that revolves around, with no seam to tell when you get back to the beginning. Time, spinning and infinite, not divided into blocks. My time is divided into blocks, each the same size, except for leap years, and then the difference is only 1/365 th greater than regular, which is imperceptible to the human eye. 

“Today,” I say. 

“What?” he asks.

I need to do this to make that spinning stop. Today can be the day where the seam is, dividing one year from the next. 

“You said you made up your name, why not make up your own birthday?  Today.”

He gives me a look that does not match any of the facial expressions on my MARA 3D facial expressions app. And that thing has over 200 different emotions preset into the database. “Seeing a cute kitten,” and “Got Brussels sprouts on my pizza” included. 

“Yesterday,” he says at last, and smiles. “Let’s say yesterday was my birthday.”

++++++++

_ Jared _

This is so much easier than I worried it would be. While Jensen sketched, I looked at paintings in the nearby galleries, checking in with him from time to time. I was worried about lying to him about certain things, but found out that I could pretty much tell the truth about anything he wanted to ask. I mean, no one ever thinks to ask, _hey, do you have a supernatural curse that makes your life different than anything I’ve ever even considered imagining?_

However. 

I know I can’t do this forever. I love the museum as much as the next person, but I’m going to want to do other things too. Jensen seems pretty content to stick to his schedule. No, not just content. It’s like he _has_ to follow his schedule. 

At lunch, I suggest we eat somewhere other than the American Café. Yesterday, he had said that it was his favorite. Not that it was the only place he could eat or anything like that. 

He smiles nervously, tapping his forehead slightly with his knuckles. This might not go over. 

“They have a sandwich for me,” he says. He keeps his eye on _Still Life with Bottle of Rum._ “Maybe after a little while, we could have lunch somewhere else. But not today. Or tomorrow.”

We both have issues we need to tiptoe around. 

At the American Café, it goes exactly as I had feared it would. That girl Tina, with her big, expectant smile. 

“Hello, Jensen,” she teases, “who’s your boyfriend?”

As nerve wracking as this situation is for me, I get a little glow of warmth in my chest hearing those words. When I say I hit the lottery with Jensen, I wasn’t kidding. I would have been happy with just someone who was willing to talk with me. 

“It’s Jared. Remember, you met him yesterday?”

Tina looks at me again, her smile faltering slightly. “Jared?”  I can literally see her scrolling through her mental rolodex, trying to remember having met me the day before. I had held out a small hope that it might be different, that something about being with Jensen would take this away, but it was only a tiny spark of a hope, so it’s not exactly surprising or devastating. 

Jensen is looking from her to me. “He wasn’t wearing a scarf yesterday,” he says, and takes the sandwich. 

“Nice to meet you,” I mutter, and follow him to the table, a turkey club in hand. 

“What do you have planned for special exhibits today?” I ask. It’s the one variable on the schedule. 

“We spent all day yesterday and this morning on my schedule, so I wrote ‘Jared’ in for special exhibits. I want you to show me your favorites.”

He looks so nervous, I reach my hand over and put it on top of his, softly. “I’ll take it easy on you,” I say. “No statuary.”  I remember that he told me yesterday that he doesn’t like how sculptures are just out in the open, uncontained. 

He taps his head, looking down at his sandwich. “No,” he says. “We can do that if there’s something you want to see. I can do it.” 

There is something I want to see. My favorite piece in the museum. 

The first time I saw _Memory_ , I was coming at it from the north entrance to the gallery, and I didn’t see the name on the plinth. I loved her immediately, even without knowing. So I don’t feel that sort of cheaty feeling I might have if I had known her name first, kind of like I have with Dali’s _Persistence of Memory_ in the Museum of Modern Art. I love that painting, but there’s a little voice in my head that says I only like it because of the title. To be honest, it doesn’t really fit with most of the pieces I would call my favorites. 

I like pretty art. I know that makes me a seriously second class patron of the arts, shallow and dimwitted and all that. But why not?  Why _shouldn’t_ I prefer to look at pretty things?  I understand that there’s often a deeper meaning in pieces that aren’t so attractive to look at, but in my mind, that’s for studying time, not how I want to fill my eyes when I’m doing it just for fun. 

_ Memory  _ isn’t just pretty. It’s _beautiful._ Breathtaking. Gorgeous. _Memory_ is a Carrara marble statue, featuring a young woman or goddess seated nude and gazing into a mirror. Her hair is delicately braided and piled on top of her head, and her modesty is nominally protected by fabric gracefully draped over her lap. 

If I lean back, and turn my head around to the left, I can actually see her from where I am sitting in the American Café. This is what I meant earlier when I was talking about the museum itself being a work of art. Here I am having lunch, and I can glance over and see some of my favorite works of art. You’re in a whole other beautiful world when you’re here. 

“What do you like about it?” Jensen asks me as we stand in front of her after we’ve eaten. 

“Besides how beautiful?”

“There are a lot of beautiful things in the world. They don’t make it into the museum unless they are also interesting.” He’s got his sketchbook out, and he’s already tracing some rudimentary lines, capturing if not the detail then the suggestion of the form and essence of the statue. 

I think carefully before I answer, wanting to get it just right. “If you look it up on the website, it tells you that she’s looking into the mirror, contemplating the ‘ephemeral nature of beauty, youth and life.’  But to me, it has a different meaning. Her name is Memory, and she’s looking into a mirror. She makes her own memories. She’s lonely, but not sad. I like that.”

“There’s a lot of interesting history to this piece,” Jensen says, continuing to sketch. "The sculptor, Daniel French, also did the Lincoln Memorial and the Minuteman in Concord, Massachusetts. The model for this piece was Audrey Munson, who was the first woman to appear fully nude in an American motion picture.”  He pauses for a moment to walk to the left of the statue and peer a little more closely at her face. “It’s like the statue has its own memories, if you think about it.”

“That’s amazing,” I say. “I just picked out a totally random piece, and you knew all that stuff about it?”

“I told you, I remember nearly everything I hear or read. I spend a lot of time here, eventually I learn a little bit about nearly everything on view. When I’m not here, I read a lot.”

“Fiction or non-fiction?”

His hand pauses sketching right where he was rounding the delicate angle of _Memory_ ’s knee. “Mostly non-fiction,” he says. “I know that’s boring, but I don’t like the idea of fake facts from fictional stories getting into my head and mixed up with real facts.”

I’m not paying attention as well as I should, because out of the corner of my eye, I see Tina talking to a handsome man in a very, very nice suit and pointing towards us. This can only be Jensen’s father. The same tawny colored hair, a little less tousled than Jensen’s, the same easy smile. And he’s looking at us and smiling huge right now. 

This is not good. This is not good, this is not good. I feel panicked, trapped. He’s seen us, and he saw me see him see us. I can’t run away. I had forgotten that Jensen’s father actually worked here, and even if I had remembered, I would have assumed that it was in an office somewhere, maybe not even on-campus. 

“Jensen!” his father says warmly as he approaches. I had had my hand on Jensen’s back, looking over his shoulder at his sketch while we talked. I snatch it away and put a couple more inches distance between the two of us. 

Jensen looks distinctly like he’s been caught red-handed doing something he really, really shouldn’t. 

“This is Jared, the boy I told you about last night,” Jensen says, and his voice is oddly monotone and flat. “Jared, this is my father, Alan Ackles.”

Mr. Ackles looks at me for a moment, and I can practically see his world view twisting around into a new shape as we speak. He saw my hand on Jensen’s back, and he’s trying to decide how he feels about it. “Very nice to meet you,” he says at last, and shakes my hand. “Jensen, you should have told me you were meeting a friend today, I would have arranged a tour.”

Jensen still doesn’t look up and he seems like a different person to me. Stiff, closed off. In that same detached voice, he says, “I did tell you about him. At dinner, last night.”  

Yesterday, when Jensen had talked about his father, it had been with a sort of sheepish pride. He thought, and rightly so, that his dad was a pretty cool guy. He talked about how important he was to the museum, and how much he had taught him about art and the collection at the Met. Now, it’s like he’s completely disengaged. 

Mr. Ackles’ blank look tells me the whole story. Of course he doesn’t remember Jensen talking about me. This feels like a train wreck coming down the tracks. How many times will this exact scene play out?  How will Jensen, who gets agitated whenever he goes off schedule, deal with something like me?  

The answer is, he can’t. It’s not fair for me to ask him to. I know how much support his parents give him, and they can’t help him with this. 

“Jensen’s given me a fantastic tour himself,” I say to bridge the awkward silence. I gesture towards _Memory_. This is my favorite piece, and I had no idea the same artist did the Lincoln Memorial.”

“Well, then. Sounds like you two are doing fine,” Mr. Ackles says. His smile has slipped into a polite disguise for the sadness I hear in his voice as he sneaks glances at Jensen, who still hasn’t even looked at him. “Just make sure you let me know if there is anything I can do to make your visit more enjoyable.” He makes as if to clap Jensen on the back, but then thinks better of it and offers me his hand again. His face is a mix of hope and defeat. I get it. He really wants Jensen to meet a nice girl, fall in love, etc. He probably doesn’t even mind that I don’t fit perfectly into that vision, but he sees Jensen’s turned back and thinks it’s not going to happen, he thinks Jensen will blow it.

I hate myself for who I am at that moment, because Mr. Ackles is right, it’s not going to happen, but not because of Jensen, because of me. And the worst part of it is, Jensen _will_ remember, and he _won’t_ understand, and he won’t be able to seek solace in his parents, because no matter how many times Jensen brings it up, they won’t remember that he had his heart broken by a medium handsome boy. 

_ Jensen _

In communications, an operator only needs to get a reading from three different data points to triangulate the exact location of any given signal. In linguistics, babies only need to hear a word in context three times to code its meaning into their vocabulary. 

If you’ve noticed something odd twice, and start to have suspicions, a third time constitutes proof of the pattern. Because the thing I’ve noticed is so weird, the third time isn’t good enough. The two other clues I have aren’t good enough either.  I have to test it one more time. And that’s what I am going to do. 

“I had lunch today with a boy at the museum,” I say when I sit down to dinner. Spaghetti. No sauce for me. Mom, who is an incurable optimist, has put a small salad next to my plate. 

Both my parents freeze, staring at me in shock. Amazingly, the exact same expressions they had on their faces last night at the dinner table. 

Dad recovers first. “A boy?  Like, a boy your age?” 

“What’s his name?” Mom chimes in. Again, before I can answer Dad’s question. She pushes her sheath of smooth, dark hair away from her eyes, tucks it behind her ear, a habit she has that she does when she’s really interested in something.

Tonight, I had thought about the things I should say beforehand, so now I know it’s probably not a great idea to say that he’s a homeless orphan and that he had been trying to sneak into the special exhibit and that I had to teach him about giving a polite quarter. 

“His name is Jared, he’s my age, and he knows a lot about art. We met at _La Carmencita_ , and he knew that there was another one.”

Mom and Dad sit there, blinking at me. 

“You should have come get me,” Dad says. “I could have arranged a private tour.”

And that’s when I know. I’m not sure what it means, but there’s no doubt in my mind any longer. For some reason, no one remembers Jared. Not Ellen, the admissions clerk, who would _definitely_ remember someone who insisted on paying only one dollar, not Tina, who had been so happy to meet Jared _both_ times, and not my dad, who shook his hand and learned that I like boys right there in the middle of the Charles Engelhard Court. Mom and Dad can’t even remember talking about him last night, and believe me, this is something they would remember. I was shocked this morning when I didn’t get the “let’s all examine our feelings” talk at the breakfast table. I thought I’d been let off the hook, but now I see it’s something all together different. 

Even all this might not make me so certain if not for the two things he told me, that his mother forgot him at preschool, and what he said about liking that the woman in the statue made her own memories. Those were two big clues. 

I don’t know what it all means, but surprisingly, I’m okay with that. I’ve spent two days with Jared, and the whole time, right from the first moment, I’ve felt like there’s something about him that doesn’t quite fit in with my understanding of the world. And nothing bad happened to me. 

“I gave him a tour myself,” I say. Which is true. 

“Will you see him again?” Dad asks. 

“Would you like to invite him here so we can meet him?”  Mom asks. 

I want to do both of these things. I decided yesterday that I wanted to open the _Jared_ door and find out what’s inside, and I haven’t changed my mind just because what’s inside is unexpected. A lot of the things that happen in my life are unexpected. Like how people don’t appreciate you telling the truth when they ask your opinion. That’s something that’s very unexpected. Like how most girls automatically don’t want to know me when they realize my behavior is a little different, even though I’m smart and kind and interesting and very good looking, that’s unexpected. 

After dinner, I get online and start searching. 

_ People who you can’t remember _ yields a bunch of articles about facial recognition disorder, which is called prosopagnosia.

_ Reverse Prosopagnosia _ , interestingly leads to a blog article by a man with autism who frequently _thinks_ he sees someone he knows, only to find out that he is mistaken. 

_ People can’t remember me  _ brings me to the lyrics of a Bob Dylan song, _Idiot Wind_ , but it’s not about someone that people can’t remember. 

_ Boy who no one can remember _ yields a bunch of varied results, a few romance novel titles, more song lyrics, and an interesting article on childhood amnesia, also known as infantile amnesia. 

I can’t seem to find any references to this particular weirdness that is happening to Jared. I go into my closet and close the door. 

A lot of people do not understand my closet. My Aunt Beatrice, for example, thinks that I’m having the equivalent of a temper tantrum when I go in my closet. In fact, it’s the opposite. A temper tantrum is a complete loss of control. Going into the closet is my way of regaining, or retaining control when things start to feel too intense for me. 

For example. Outside, the world and outer space go on _forever._ If you ever stop to really think about what that means, it will give you a very, very uncomfortable feeling. I’m very sensitive to that uncomfortable feeling. Being in an enclosed space makes me feel more contained. More certain. There’s less noise. Less things to look at. Fewer things screaming for my attention. 

If things are particularly bad for me, for example, if someone sat next to me on the subway and ate shrimp lo mein with wooden chopsticks out of a paper carton, and they didn’t keep their mouth shut when they were eating, and their noises and smells filled up my entire brain and won’t leave, in such an example, I might go into the closet and turn the light off and wrap myself in my green chenille blanket and just wait until I can think normally again. 

Other times, when I just need a little time to get away from all the everyday little stresses that add up and start to make me feel agitated, I go in and draw. 

My dad took all the shelves and clothes rods out of my closet when I was first old enough to know that I wanted to go in there. Mom painted the walls in there white, and they gave me a set of markers. Not Crayola Washable markers, like most parents would have done. Dad told me, “all art is art.” Which meant that if I was expressing myself through drawing, then it was art, and they saw value in it. 

You know how some families have a door frame they mark their children’s growth on through the years?  My parents have my closet. Down low, you can see my clear progression from random to controlled and then named scribbling as high as my arms could reach. Above that, pre-schematic and schematic scenes depicting our family, mother, father, myself, and occasionally the baby that my mother lost before I was born, which was an intense source of preoccupation for me for some time. My transitional stage was very brief, and can only be discerned in a few places between the lower and upper reaches of the closet. The upper areas, I’m still working on. 

I try not to be overly deliberate in what I put on the walls, but I’m acutely conscious that not only my father, but also some of his colleagues occasionally study what I’ve drawn. Neil Pinna, who is chief of acquisitions at the museum has more than once made an offer for the walls, as well as Cynthia Cornwallis, who owns the Telton Gallery between 5 th and Madison Avenues. I think this is stupid, because in the first place, it’s not finished. I’m seventeen and I’ll probably continue to work on it as long as I live with mom and dad, which frankly, may be for a while. Secondly, no matter what my father says, this is not art. This is therapy. There’s no intention or theme to the overall work. I’ve declined, but at this point, it almost seems like a competition between my father’s friends. They want it, and are prepared to keep offering. 

Tonight, I work in just black, cracking open some new sharpies. I have _Memory_ on my mind, but also Jared. Instead of holding a mirror, my figure is reaching out in supplication. Despite the difference, I think most people would recognize it as an adaptation of _Memory._

By the time I am done, I feel better. Mom hears that I am out, and asks if she can see what I drew. I nod, and she stands in the closet doorway. “Interesting interpretation,” she says. “What made you change her that way?”

Of course mom recognizes the statue. In the first place, she’s the one who would bring me to the museum every day before I was old enough to go on my own. In the second place, I am a very good artist. 

I can’t help it, I have to test one more time, just to be sure. “I met a boy at the museum today, and he reminds me of _Memory_.”

Mom gives me a searching look. “A boy?” she asks. “Like, a friend?”  There’s a lot more questions in that question than just the words say, but it’s also a very definite answer. 

++++++++

_ Jared _

It’s Wednesday, which is good for me, because that’s the day I volunteer at the shelter and I need something to keep my mind off Jensen. I usually sleep at the shelter the night before I volunteer, but I felt so sad last night that I treated myself to the Hilton at Times Square. I have a key card there that I took from a cleaning cart a few months ago, and so far, so good, it still works. 

Working at the shelter is very, very good for me. It helps me feel like I’m not such a terrible free-loader as you might suppose me to be, with all this stealing and sneaking and walking out on my diner tabs. There are a lot of people really down on their luck, so much more so than I, and I wish they could all live as comfortably as I do. Helping out is the least I can do. 

But the main reason it’s so good for me is that I sort of have friends here. They just don’t know it. At the shelter, there’s lots of volunteers who come in and out, showing up once in a while only because it looks good on a college resume, so no one thinks twice about seeing someone they’ve never seen before stocking cans in the storage room. There’s a core group of regulars, and then there are some people who are actually employed at the shelter. These are my friends. I’ve been there with them through marriages and divorces and pregnancies and grandchildren being born. Through relationships and break-ups and college graduations. Sometimes they think it’s weird that the stray volunteer kid in the back gets all choked up on their behalf when something bad happens, or is beaming for joy for them when they get engaged, but for the most part, they take it in stride and they’ve forgotten about me later that day anyway, so no big deal. 

A regular job, with training and human resources and paperwork and paychecks is just not an option for me. But you’d be surprised how necessary a job is for a social life. Not that I really have a social life, but working at the shelter lets me pretend I am part of a social group, at least for a day.

Today, I’m washing dishes. You would not believe the steady stream of pots and pans that the cooks can produce. I can stand at the sink literally all day and never run out of work. By the end of the day, I’ll barely be able to straighten my back, and I am _definitely_ sleeping in a hotel tonight. Preferably one with hot tub jets in the baths. 

My heart is so heavy as I fill the sink, scrub, rinse, set aside to dry. Scrub, rinse, set aside to dry. 

“Hey there, what’s your heartbreak?” Sandy McCoy asks me. Sandy is one of the paid employees here, and she supplements her income bartending at a club downtown on the weekends. She is particularly gifted at listening to other people’s problems. “You look like you lost your last friend.”

Hearing it like that knocks the wind out of me. Not just my last friend, my only friend. Literally the only possible person who _could_ be a friend to me, and I have to walk away. 

Sandy holds her arms out for a hug, and I go in, feeling tears squeeze out of the corners of my eyes. She’s a super good hugger. Sandy broke up with her long-term boyfriend about six months ago, and since that time, she’s asked me out three or four times, each time acting like she was surprising even herself. One time, it happened close enough to the end of the shift that I was able to stick around with her and go to a movie together. She’s a sweetheart. 

“Someone break your heart?” she asks, pushing back so she can see my face, but not fully releasing me from the hug. 

“More like the other way around,” I say. “I don’t want to, but it’s the right thing, you know?” 

She nods her head. “Maybe,” she says, “Maybe not. Give it some time, you’ll know if you did the right thing or not.”

“I’m lonely,” I whisper on her shoulder. It’s easy to confess these things to someone who won’t remember come tomorrow. 

“Sweetie,” she says, “you won’t be lonely for long. Not with that styling hair net.” She gives my hair net an affectionate pat. “Besides, we’re all lonely.” She takes up position drying dishes as I wash. “I bartend at a club in mid-town on the weekends, and every single person sitting at the bar is lonely. It’s the human condition. Married people are lonely. Single people are lonely. Beautiful dishwashing boys like you get lonely. You’ve just gotta get your little bit of happiness while you can and call it good.”

That gets a smile out of me at last. _Beautiful dishwashing boy._ But it also makes me think of Jensen’s more honest assessment of me as medium-handsome. That’s what sucks about this so bad. Right from the very first moment he was one hundred percent honest, and one hundred percent himself. And all I could do was lie and hide who I was. Doomed from the start, and I had to stupidly let him get dragged into it knowing there really was no chance. 

The dishwater is getting old, cold and dirty, so I pull the plug and drain the water. I help Sandy put away some of the pots and pans she’s dried, although I am not really eager for his part of the job to be done; it’s nice having her around, even if for just a little while. If she goes back to the store room or something, I’ll have to start over. It’s exhausting. It’s only eleven o’clock in the morning and I’m exhausted.

I’m only seventeen, and I’m exhausted. 

And furthermore, now one of my favorite places in the city is off limits. For a good long while at least. 

Or is it?  

I wipe down the bits of soggy food off the sides of the sink, rinse it down and put the plug back in. Lots of soap, some hot water, and look at my sparkling dishwater. Sandy helps me carry over a load of skillets from the cook’s station.

Okay, if I don’t want to bump into Jensen, theoretically that doesn’t mean I have to give up going to the museum. I have his schedule. I could just make sure I’m not in any of those areas at his scheduled times. 

But even as I am saying it, I know what I’m doing. It’s the same thing I did on that first day, when I told him I didn’t want to go for a cup of tea, and then convinced myself that I wasn’t actually looking for him after that. I just couldn’t stay away. If I really wanted to avoid seeing him again, all I’d have to do is just go after four o’clock in the evening. 

“What do you do when you really want to be with somebody, but you know you’re not right for them?” I ask Sandy as I scrub one of the huge stock pots. 

“I’m not sure that’s up to you to decide,” she says. “That’s patronizing. You be the best person you can be, and let _them_ decide if you’re right for them or not.” 

She has a point. But I remember how Jensen had been so withdrawn after his father met me. How he’d gone with me to all my favorite pieces, but that he had stopped talking or even making those fleeting glances that he’d been giving me up until then. Throughout the afternoon, I came back to him often to find him not just tapping, but actually knocking his forehead with his knuckles, drawing stares from people around us. 

Please do not misunderstand me. I did not feel embarrassed. I did not feel uncomfortable. I felt _guilty._ It’s one thing if you _think_ you might be bad for someone, another thing altogether if you can _see_ that you are literally causing them distress, just by being who you are. 

“So…. does this mean you’re on the rebound?  Need a little company?” Sandy quirks and eyebrow at me, “Maybe after work we could—”

“I’m seventeen,” I cut her off. “And no offense, but… I go the other way.” 

Although in all reality, the fact that I’m not into girls is only one of the reasons why it wouldn’t be a good idea. Not the least of which is that my heart is currently busy knitting itself up in scar tissue. 

++++++++

_ Jensen _

When I set my mind to something, I am very methodical. My mind is set on seeing Jared again. Things did not go well yesterday afternoon. I knew I was going off the rails, but I couldn’t help myself at the time, it was just too much. Now I’ve had time to process though, and I know I can do better. 

I don’t know exactly what is going on with Jared, but I do know that I am the last person on earth who should push someone away because there is something different about them. Not only that, but I have a _lot_ of experience dealing with things that seem alien or strange, because the way people behave ninety percent of the time seems alien and strange to me. 

When we left, I didn’t ask him if I could see him again tomorrow, even though he was looking at me in a way that I’m guessing was… expectant. Hopeful. Which really says a lot right there. I had a lot of my autism behaviors on display, and not exactly the positive ones, and he still wanted to see me. 

I was just too far in. I had to make a closet in my mind or else completely lose my shit right there in the museum. That happened once before, and I swore it would never happen again. 

So. I have a three stage plan if he doesn’t show up today. Stage one is to stick to my schedule, that way, he will know where to find me if he wants to. I do not think the chances of this working are very good, so I will only try it for four days. Stage two is to assume that he’s still coming to the museum, but avoiding me. If that’s the case, then I should be able to find him by going to his favorite pieces that he showed me. I think this has a much better chance of success. I have created a rotation of six days, one for each work of art, and I will go through the rotation five times, or a total of one month. 

After that, I’m not quite sure what stage three will be. I’ll have to go over everything he said to me during our two days together, and see if I can find any leads. This stage has an even lower chance of success than stage one, because if the chances of two people randomly crossing paths in the Metropolitan Museum of Art are slim, the chances when you widen the radius to include all of New York City are even smaller. Much smaller. 

Since stage one is so easy for me, I decide that this will be the time that I use to research for stage three. I have two days worth of memory prompts. 

Stage one, day one, I go through my file cabinet to find the sketches I made the first day we met and pack them in my satchel with me. Including _The Portal_ , because even though we hadn’t actually met then, he had been on my mind while I was drawing it. I remember how he had moved among the people on the stairs out front, not really ignoring them, but almost as if he lived in a separate reality from them. I write down everything he had been wearing. A pair of khakis with lots of pockets. A heather-grey Henley with an army surplus field jacket pulled over it, also lots of pockets. 

He’d been wearing Adidas Ultra Boost walking sneakers, which I didn’t particularly notice at the time, but if I look at the picture of him in my head, I can clearly see the brand name and model emblazoned on the back of his heel as he walked up the steps in front of me. I google the sneakers and find that they’re nearly two hundred dollars a pair. 

Which gives me pause, makes me think for the first time about what his life must really be like. How does he have sneakers like that?  Come to think of it, how does he have anything?  He said he was homeless. He said he didn’t have a mother and father. That his mother had left him at school and never come back for him. That after that, he’d never gone to school, but taught himself, with a little help from people at the shelter, and by reading things in the library, and going on tours in museums. 

All this, he’d shared with me without really telling me the most important thing about himself. I briefly considered the possibility that he himself didn’t notice that people didn’t remember him, but rejected it when I realized that it only took me two days to notice. 

Moving on to _La Carmencita_. The painting where he’d first spoken to me. I comb through the details of our conversation to learn what I can. He’d remarked on how he thought it was cool that we remembered her all these years later. So many clues. What was it he had said about the special exhibit? _They never remember me._

This is why Ellen didn’t remember a boy paying only one dollar to get in. This is why I had to introduce him twice to Tina in the Café. 

And that’s when the biggest one hits me. It’s so huge that I break schedule go directly to _Still Life with Bottle of Rum,_ even though it’s not time yet. I see the security guard look at his watch when I come in, which strikes me as kind of funny, I never thought about how other people would be so conscious of my schedule before.

I pull out the _Still Life_ sketches, and the moment comes flooding back to me. The look on his face when I spoke to him that second time. The incredulity. The intense surprise and relief and me being worried that he might cry or grab me and hug me. Because I _recognized him._ I _remembered him._

It’s not possible. No one could live like that. No one. I can’t, absolutely can’t be the only person who has ever remembered him. 

Deep shame floods my brain like black tar slowly filling up all the cracks, remembering how I shut down and shut him out yesterday. Imagine what his life must be like. Imagine thinking the nightmare is finally over, imagine his relief at meeting someone who can finally— I don’t have to imagine. I saw it. And then, I pushed him away. The one person. 

I have to find him. I have to. 

My father finds me at lunchtime, eating my sandwich in the café. “I hear you’ve been having an off day,” he says, concern furrowing his brow. 

It irritates me, even though I know people are just looking out for me. I remember the guard checking his watch. I look over at Tina behind the counter, and she looks away quickly. And then I realize how lucky I am. This safety net I have. Surrounded by all these people who know and love me. I can’t even comprehend how alone Jared must feel right now. 

A lot of people think that people with autism or Asperger syndrome cannot feel empathy. They couldn’t be farther from the truth. I feel things just as deeply as anyone. When I was younger, it’s true that I often saw people only in terms of what they could do for me, almost like tools. I didn’t often see people as being separate from myself at all. For example, one of the reasons I never lied as a child is because I assumed my mother knew everything that I knew. If I had eaten a piece of candy in one room while she was in the other, I assumed that she knew I had eaten the piece of candy. 

That’s a developmental stage, and autism is characterized by developmental _delays_. I know now that people are their own discreet beings, and that they have their own needs and emotions separate from my own. True, most of the time, I’m not interested to know what those needs and emotions are. Most of the time. I care deeply about my parents, and I worry constantly that I’m causing them stress. 

But I can’t worry about everyone. I don’t know how neurotypical people do it, walking around, caring about everyone around them. I can’t imagine walking around caring about the emotions and needs of every single person around me. It would break me down in no time at all. My therapist says it’s not like that. That typically, you would walk down the street and _social conventions_ help you understand the limit of your responsibility for meeting other people’s needs. 

So there you go. Social conventions are something I’m not hardwired with, so I have to make my own limits, which is to have a hierarchy of who I care about. Mother and Father are within the smallest radius, and I care about them a lot. Beyond that are people with whom I have to be polite, and offer help if I see someone in obvious distress. This includes my school mates, teachers, the staff at the museum, people I pass on the street and in the subway. I care about these people in the sense that I am a decent human being, but it’s hard for me to be interested in them. 

All this is to say that I’ve come up against something for which I am not really emotionally equipped to deal with, and that is the depth to which I am distressed about Jared. My body feels tense, and my brain feels slippery. I want very badly to ask my father for help with this, but I can’t. No one can help.

This must be how he feels all the time. 

Then again, maybe not. I think how quickly he referred to me as a friend. I think of how many times he smiled. Of the look on his face when he was showing me his favorite pieces of art. He must have made some sort of peace with the way he is. 

It doesn’t matter though. Just because he can survive being who he is, doesn’t mean that he likes being alone. No one deserves that.   

“I’m worried about a friend,” I say. 

I won’t lie, the look of surprise on his face hurts a little. To be fair, my life is not overflowing in the friend department, but still. I can literally see him swallowing the phrase _what friend?_

“Okay,” he says, “what’s the problem?  How can we help?”

See?  I do not understand people who “hate” their parents just on principle. 

“I’m not sure yet, and that’s what’s got me so….” I rap my forehead hard with my knuckles to show him how I am. “But I’m okay, I mean, myself. I just have to work through what I’m going to do and I don’t have it yet.”

My father looks at me for a while without saying anything. Then he says, “You’re a really good kid, Jensen,” and gets up. “If there’s anything I can do, just ask, okay?”

“Okay.”

I have to be patient. I have to remember that this is just stage one, and I already knew that stage one was probably not going to work. 

As he’s walking away, I realize there is something I want. “Dad?” I ask, and he turns around, his face eager. It’s almost sad how badly my parents want… I’m not exactly sure what they want. A richer emotional life for me?  Some sort of proof that I’ve got a beating heart underneath my autism armor?  Why don’t they _know_ it already?

“I’d like to view a print in the archives,” I say, and pretend not to notice how his face falls a little. 

“Sure,” he says. Come on back when you’re done eating. “I’ll set you up.”

The print I want to see is a chromogenic print, which is just a fancy way of saying that it’s an actual photograph made from a film negative. It depicts the legs of what appears to be several show girls and tuxedo-clad men behind a partially raised theater curtain. The title is _The Lonely Life_ and I want to see it because of how the curtain is hiding the faces and most of the bodies of the performers. 

I think of Jared, imagine him standing behind a curtain. I think how for him, the curtain might raise all the way occasionally, but fall just as quickly. In the theater, every time that curtain raises, the audience is new, experiencing the show for the first time, even though for the performers, they’re doing the same thing over and over. 

What I’d like to do for Jared is to keep the curtain up for once, even if it’s just for an audience of one. 

++++++++

_ Jared _

Thursdays is my day for school. I long ago gave up trying to go to elementary school or high school; inevitably I’d spend the whole day getting forgotten in the guidance counselor’s office while they tried to make put together _paperwork_ to enroll me. In every school building you walk into, look at the bulletin board in the entrance to the building. You’ll find a cheery little flier that says _all students_ have a right to an education, even those without a home address. Ha. I try not to be bitter. 

But once I was old enough to look like I might pass for a college student, I could take pretty much whatever class I want. Those big lecture halls are _perfect_ , I’m just another anonymous face in the crowd. 

Two years ago, I did a bunch of research in the New York Public Library on what career I might be best suited for. I took you don’t even want to know how many quizzes online and in the back of self-help books to find out what color my parachute was and what kind of career I might enjoy. Here’s a list of my results from one online quiz:   
•        Farm owner   
•        Recording technician   
•        Biologist   
•        Retoucher   
•        Martial arts    
•        Substitute   
•        Train driver

These results made me laugh, not only because “farm owner” is simultaneously the _perfect_ job for me and the least likely thing ever to become reality, but also because the results were presented in this sort of word cloud format, and the last three were all one line, like this:  _martial arts substitute train driver._ Which could be three separate things, two separate things, or one really crazy job. Sometimes when I need a good laugh, I try and picture my life as a martial arts substitute train driver. 

The point being that who the heck knows what kind of work I would be best suited for. So I just take classes on subjects that interest me. This is how I got started in photography. I had some sort of vague idea when I was younger that if I really understood how photography worked, I could figure out how to keep myself in a photograph. I took a bunch of photography classes at NYU, and found in the process that I kind of have an eye for it. 

Today though, I’m working on a liberal arts degree. Not really, of course, I’ll never get a degree, but I decided I’d feel a little better about myself if I felt like I was at least as educated as the average person on the street. So I’m following the curriculum for a liberal arts degree at City University of New York. 

Today though, my heart’s not in it. I’m in pre-algebra, and although I “did the homework,” the numbers up on the big smartboard just aren’t arranging themselves into any sort of meaningful information. You might think this is the ideal way to take a class, auditing it really; no homework, no tests, every student’s dream, right? The problem is, if you get lost, if you find yourself heading down the wrong path with a problem, there’s no one to guide and redirect you. This is the second time I’ve taken this class, and this is just about the point in the semester when I start to fall behind. 

I keep thinking of all kinds of excuses to go back and find Jensen. Like, maybe he deserves to hear the truth. Maybe I should at least thank him. Maybe there’s some way I can— but really, it’s all just rationalizing my own selfish desire. 

I tap on the arm of my desk until the girl next to me shoots over a dirty look. Lord forbid I distract her from her instagram account, which she spends the majority of class updating from her phone. The number of times I’ve seen this girl take a selfie of herself with the smartboard as a backdrop?  No doubt she’s trying to convince someone that she’s smart, or at the very least, going to class. 

This is hopeless. I’m going to have to cover this material on my own, maybe on Math Planet online, or at the library or something. My head’s just not in it. I pack up my books and leave. A few people look up, including the teacher, and follow me out of the room with their eyes, but they’ll forget about it soon enough. It will be like I never happened. 

I try to console myself with the second best option, the Museum of Modern Art. Which, truth be told isn’t exactly sloppy seconds. They have _Starry Night,_ and _The Persistence of Memory_. The photography collection is better than the Met’s in my opinion at least, so that’s something. But it just doesn’t have the same romance that the Met does. 

And I checked. The sign at the admissions desk does _not_ say “recommended”. Admission is free for kids under sixteen, so sometimes I can get away with that, but I don’t feel like waiting in line just to be turned away if I happen to be looking a little older today, so I just go in the service entrance instead. This is just a case of looking like I am there on purpose, like I have a good reason. I have literally never been stopped. Of course, I don’t come here as often, so it’s not like I can compare my success rate to the Met. 

But like pre-algebra, everything I see just sort of glides by on the surface, like I’m seeing, but my brain isn’t really processing what I’m seeing. I go visit _Persistence,_ and it’s just a blur. My eyes well up with tears, and my heart squeezes painfully. What I really want to look at is Pierre August Cot’s matching set of larger than life oil paintings, _The Storm_ and _Springtime_. Which are housed, guess where.

Who am I kidding?  What I really want is for someone to look at me like the youths in those paintings are looking at each other. Drunk on first love. I had less than a day where I fooled myself that it might even be possible. And even after that very small taste, I feel hollowed out and empty in it’s absence. 

I wonder how Jensen is doing. I worry about how he is doing. I think back to how many months, probably even years it took me to adjust to what happened to me. It was a long time before I gave up trying to get someone to believe me. What is he going through right now?  Has he even put it together?  Maybe he just moved on. 

I spend the rest of the afternoon lying on a cot in the homeless shelter, feeling sorry for myself, ignoring the pointed looks and heaving sighs from Green Alice, who obviously wants to tell me about how I have it pretty good, and how she’s such a hard case and somehow more legitimately homeless than I am. 

I feel mean and crappy. Resentful. I pick at the meatloaf and instant mashed potatoes for dinner and I don’t offer to help with the dishes. Which of course, doesn’t solve anything. 

Maybe I need to take a trip. I think of someplace I’ve always wanted to go. Hollywood, to the Chinese Theatre and see all those handprints in the sidewalk, people remembered, immortalized on the silver screen. The opposite of me, and yet a lot of them were still unhappy. 

Or perhaps the Grand Canyon. Something so much bigger than me that I’ll have no choice but to stop feeling sorry for myself. 

Or, maybe, I could just stop feeling sorry for myself without the big grand gesture. Get busy. I pull out my math textbook and work with the numbers for a while, which seems to satisfy Green Alice in some strange way.

As the conscious part of my mind tackles the math problems, my subconscious mind drifts to a different sort of problem, something that I think about a lot, though I try not to; if there are other people like me out there, how would I find them?  

Maybe I meet many people like me all the time. Maybe we all do, and we just don’t know it. It’s not like I walk around with a big sign on my back advertising what I am. And this isn’t the sort of conversation you have with someone you just met. So we would have forgotten each other before we ever had the chance for it to come up. 

So it would have to be something external. Some way of advertising our presence, letting each other know: you are not alone. But how?  It’s not like I can take an ad out in the paper. And even if I did, what are the chances that someone like me would see it?  It would have to be huge, something you couldn’t miss, like sky writing or something. What would it say?  “You are not alone” is not specific enough. It would need to leave no doubt for someone like me that the message was for them. On top of that, it would have to have specific instructions. What to do, how to make contact, where to go, something like that. Coordinating something like that is just so completely beyond my abilities it’s not even funny. I can’t even place an order at a restaurant and be certain that I’ll get my food. 

I sigh. This whole thing with Jensen has left me so lonely. Because let’s just pretend for a moment that we were able to manage some sort of relationship. Who’s to say that it would last?  What are the chances that the one random person who just happens to be able to keep me in his mind would be _the one_. The one that I could love, and who would love me back?  For life?  

And yet, a tiny voice in the back of my mind says that the chances are very good. Maybe he could remember me for a reason. Fate, or destiny or whatever. I don’t think very often about God, but I do have a vague sort of sense that he’s up there somehow. Maybe this is his peace offering. Giving me this one thing to hope for. 

I think I’m finally figuring out this whole ax+ by = c thing, and as the mathematical knots start to unravel, I start to feel a little better. My appetite returns with a vengeance and I soothe myself with a helping of cake and ice cream at the kitchen counter. The ice cream is melting, and the cake is a day old and from the grocery store, but the sugar shock helps bring me out of my funk a little. 

Tomorrow, I’m going to do it. I’m just going to go to look. To see how he’s doing. Because if there’s some sort of cosmic fate thing going on here, I don’t want to make it harder on the universe by staying away. I’m going to make myself available for a miracle to happen. In fact, now that I think about it, the miracle already happened. I just need to let it keep happening. 

 

_ Jensen _

It’s day three of stage two. I’ve fretted a little bit about probability and stage two. Is it better to spend one day at each of the six pieces, one after the other, and rotate, like I planned, or would it be better to spend five days in a row at each of the six pieces?  What if I was always a day ahead of him?  And now that I’m off my own regular schedule, what if he’s looking for me there and can’t find me? What if, what it, what if?  The shiftiness of all the possibilities makes me feel loose and uncertain, wanting so badly to find some way to contain everything. 

Luckily, one of my best forms of therapy is readily available. I throw myself into the challenge of sketching something new, and this is eventually what helps me make up my mind in favor of one piece for five days straight. Doing a new sketch each day would just be too much. A little familiarity goes a long way towards soothing my nerves. So, actually, I’m cheating a little and spending ten days in this gallery, which houses two of Jared’s favorite pieces. _Springtime_ , and _The Storm_ , both by Pierre Auguste Cot.

It’s easy to understand why Jared likes these paintings so much. The colors are lush, and the sheer size of the canvases overwhelm the senses. But it’s the emotion that’s written plainly on the faces of the figures that draw in even the most cynical of hearts. The way the youths are looking at their respective mates, there’s no mistaking that look. There’s no critical debate about the meaning. These are paintings of love, of tenderness. 

Jared may have adapted to the way he has to live his life, but everyone, even me, wants to feel love like you can see in these pictures. To have someone feel about you that way. To have someone look at you like that. 

I’m trying to capture that in my sketches, but it’s very difficult. Because it’s not just a matter of the mechanics of facial expressions. These people are _lit up_ from the inside out.

I look up from my sketchpad, and there he is. 

He’s looking at me in such a way that I know if I hesitate for even a moment, I’ll lose it. I meet his gaze, and keep it, something that is normally very difficult for me, but in this case, it’s just like my eyes are an extension of my hands, and I keep drawing, right over the work I’d already done. I draw his eyes, and feel how Monsieur Cot must have felt when he captured the magic for his paintings. 

He stands perfectly still, though his hands and possibly lips are trembling. But his eyes are shining, and I know I’ve done the right thing, waiting here for him. Now he knows how badly I wanted this, that I wasn’t just willing to leave it to chance. 

When I’ve got it, I set my sketch pad down on the bench behind me and take two steps forward, and hold out my arms. He rushes to me, and I wrap my arms around him so tight. Suddenly, I realize that this is the first, the very first moment, the first person I’ve ever known who needs me to take care of them more than I need them to take care of me. And I know I can do it. 

“You came,” he whispers into my ear, and I run my hand up into his silky hair.

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I’m so, so sorry I pushed you away. I didn’t realize yet.”  He should know this. I’m a good person, and I did something awful and hurtful. It should be obvious that I’m sorry and that I feel bad, but I’ve learned in therapy and from my parents that even if it’s _completely_ obvious how bad you feel, you still need to say it. Out loud. 

He pushes back a little, peering at my face. I look away, and just feel him. Feel him in my arms, the heat of his chest, feeling his hitching breaths against my ribs. 

“Realize what?” he asks. His voice is scared and hopeful at the same time. This must be the first time he’s ever been able to talk to someone about this. 

“What you’re like,” I say. “About the forgetting. There’s no other way on earth that my parents would have forgotten about me saying I liked a boy. Or that Ellen would have forgotten someone who only paid a dollar.”

He smiles, and all this tension that I hadn’t known I was keeping in my chest lets go, and it’s suddenly easier to breathe. 

“I only paid a dollar again today,” he says. 

I laugh. “And?” I ask.

He laughs too. “Same thing.”  Then he does something that reminds me of myself, he looks at my chest instead of my face, his eyes lowered. “Same thing as the last two days. I was looking for you in the wrong galleries.”

“That was stage one,” I say. 

As we break the hug, I let my hand slide down his arm and take his hand in mine. It feels amazing, like my feelings are swirling around me in a whirl, and yet grounded and sure at the same time. 

“How many stages were there?” he asks. 

“Three, but to be fair, I only had the vaguest idea of how stage three was going to work.”

He looks thoughtful. “It’s something I think about a lot. How I could find someone like myself. I don’t know how I would do it.”

“I have some questions,” I say. “I… I’m sometimes not sure when I’m being rude. You don’t have to—”

“Try me,” he says. 

“Why do you have such expensive shoes? How did you get them?”

He doesn’t answer for a moment, so I’m afraid that I did exactly what I was worried about. Asked a question that was too personal. But when I look up, his face is… amused. Maybe surprised a little mixed in there. If I tried to look this up on my MARA app, it might be titled “happily surprised,” but I’m not sure that’s exactly right. 

“Of everything you could ask, that’s the first question you want answered?”

“Yes.”

We sit down on the bench, and he picks up the sketch I did, his eyes superimposed on top of the _Storm_ sketch. 

“I had to steal them,” he says, and I squeeze his hand gently to let him know that it’s okay. “I can’t have a regular job, I have no family. I have some ways of making money, but not much. I try and buy most of my clothes, but I walk all day, every day, I need sneakers that I can’t afford. It’s much easier to steal one pair of high quality sneakers than it is to steal a lot of pairs of crappy sneakers that wear out right away.”

His voice catches, it sounds raspy and swollen in his throat. “Do you really…” he stops, and swallows. “Do you really understand what I’m like?”

“No.” Because I don’t. How can he be someone that no one can remember?  “I mean, I figured out that no one can remember you. But what does that mean?” I’ve been spending most of my mental energy figuring out how to get back to him, I kept pushing the bigger questions aside. 

“It means just that. I don’t stay in people’s memories. About five minutes, that seems to be the limit, I’ve tested it. You’re the first one.”

“What about notes or pictures or recordings?”

“I don’t know how it works, but it doesn’t. If your dad took a picture of me, once he forgot me the picture would be gone too.”  As he says this, he traces his fingers around the outline of my sketch. I wonder what would happen if I drew him. 

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been this way as long as I can remember. Since the day my mother forgot me.”  

“Okay.” I mean, it’s not okay. It really sucks. I mean, forget about how much it sucks for him, which is much, much larger than how much it sucks for me, but I can’t help think about how badly my parents want me to find someone, fall in love, have a family, do all that normal stuff. Well, I’ve done the first thing on the list, if not exactly the gender they had in mind, and I don’t have any experience with the second, so I’m not really sure, but it sure feels like the second thing is happening. But they’ll never know. Or they might know for an afternoon, or a day, but they’ll never _really_ know. 

But. That’s what love means, right? It means that your feelings for the person you love are bigger than the difficulties that stand in the way of that love. Right?  

“Okay?” he asks. I can see his body is held up tight, like his chest won’t really let him breathe. 

“Yes, okay. You are part of the world I didn’t know existed before now, and your weirdness is not even a little contained, but I want to get to know you, so I have to be okay with that. And so ‘okay’ is what I said.”

His smile is so intense, that I can’t look at him. I look down at my sketch and wonder again. 

“I felt really bad,” he says. “I thought I freaked you out.”

“You did. But now I know. And also, you can show me, and we can test different things out now. And I can learn and the more I learn, the less the weirdness will freak me out.”

“Test things?”

“Well, yeah. Like what if we talk to someone, and you leave, but I keep talking about you while you’re gone. What would happen then?”

He taps the drawing. “Or what about this?  What if you drew me?”

“That’s what I mean. Test things. Start by showing me.”  

++++++++

_ Jared _

I cannot describe the feelings swirling around in my head at this moment. No, not just my head, my whole body. I literally feel excitement rushing through my bloodstream, like a wave. Jensen’s holding my hand like that’s the most natural thing in the world, and it feels strong and warm and good. Real. There’s someone real besides me who understands and believes. 

I love stories with unreliable narrators. My particular favorites are when it turns out the protagonist is insane, or seeing the world in a radically different way than it really presents. You might think that might not be comforting to me, but it sort of is. Sometimes I imagine that I’m just crazy, but otherwise normal. That maybe all this stuff about people not remembering is just in my head, and that I’m really just another crazy person living at the shelter. Because that means that maybe, at some point, I could be fixed. Get the right psychotropic drugs or something, and lead a normal life. Be part of the healthcare system. Not worry about starving to death in prison or dying alone in the streets. 

But this? Knowing for sure that I’m not crazy?  One million, trillion times better. Having someone believe me?  Having someone who I am reasonably sure is still going to believe me tomorrow and the next day and the next day?  I feel so full of relief and hope and warmth that I just want to—

But before I even think it, _he’s_ doing it. Jensen stops in his tracks, and pulls me to face him. He’s smiling like the sun, and I can tell it’s because he knows he’s made me happy. His fingers reach up and touch my hair, push it away from my eyes, and then he kisses me. We’re kissing. His lips are soft, and his hand slides down my arm, around my back and pulls me in tight. It is everything I’ve been waiting for for so, so long. 

When we pull apart, his smile has turned shy, his eyes still happy, but he’s looking at a spot on the floor about three feet behind me. “That was okay, right?” he says. “I just—”

“Yes,” I say, “that was perfect." I smile and touch my lips, because I can still feel the warmth that Jensen put there. In this moment, I don’t care if anyone in the rest of the world can remember me, all that matters is this, right here. That Jensen can remember me. 

“Let’s do a loop around through the galleries, and come back.”  Jensen tugs gently at my hand. It takes me a moment to realize what he’s getting at, because that kiss, my first _real_ kiss had pushed away everything else. I forgot that I was supposed to be showing Jensen how I work, what my world is like. 

We do a loop, as Jensen suggested. The eight-hundreds galleries are my favorites, and we take our time, stopping briefly at _Still Life with Bottle of Rum_ and _The Shoes_ before heading back to Gallery 827 and _The Storm_ and _Springtime_. We both look around and spot Malcolm at the same time. Malcolm is the security guard for the eight-hundreds galleries, and he never misses a thing. If someone steps one inch beyond the appropriate boundary around the paintings, he can sense it from three galleries away. He’s a graying redhead with a beard, and he looks more like he should be out scouting in the Appalachians than guarding art, but maybe that’s what makes him so good. 

We drop hands before we come within sight of Malcolm. I walk in the gallery first, and make eye contact with Malcolm. He sees me and nods politely, but there’s no flicker of recognition, even though I was just in here with Jensen fifteen minutes ago. _Kissing him,_ I remind myself. 

This is normal for me, and feels normal and expected, but I am curious to watch how Jensen takes it. He enters the gallery a few steps behind me and starts walking towards Malcolm. The difference is immediately apparent. When someone knows you, their whole body reacts differently. He turns slightly, his posture loosens. There’s a light, I’m not sure that’s the right word, but that’s all I’ve got, a light in his yes that says, _hello, I know you._

I stand just a few feet away, pretending to be admiring the painting there, Boldini’s portrait of the Duchess of Marlborough and her son. Malcolm can clearly see me. 

“I’m looking for my friend,” Jensen says. “He was here with me earlier. Kind of long hair, a little taller than me?” 

Malcolm smiles broadly. “A friend, you say?” 

“Yes,” Jensen says. He starts to add something, but stutters slightly, “M-my boyfriend.”

I really like how everyone here knows Jensen, everyone feels protective of him, and how everyone seems so genuinely happy for him to have a friend. The warmth on Malcolm’s face is wonderful. It’s nice, but also a little sad. It suggests that maybe they didn’t think that was in the cards for him. 

“Why don’t you tell me his name, and if he comes looking for you, I’ll let him know that—“

“Oh, wait, there he is,” Jensen says, gesturing towards me. 

Malcolm turns towards me, surprised. I have the feeling he doesn’t even remember seeing me come in only a few moments ago. 

“Well. There you go.”  Malcolm tips his hat at me again. Jensen looks back and forth between us, studying our faces and Malcolm’s reaction. 

“It’s lunchtime,” Jensen says to me. “Let’s go talk in the café. Thanks, Malcolm.”

Malcolm gives us a little wave and a vague smile as we walk away. I squeeze Jensen’s hand, because the for the first time, walking away is a little less lonely. 

“Was that right?” Jensen asks me, and I’m not sure what he means. 

“Was what right?” I ask. 

“Are you my boyfriend?  I said it before I thought about whether or not that might be true.”

I think about that kiss. I think about him waiting for me by _Springtime_ and _The Storm._ I think of the feeling that welled up inside me when I first saw him there. I think about that stupid old saying, _if you love something, set it free, if it comes back to you, it’s yours._ “Yes,” I say. “That’s right.”

++++++++

_ Jensen _

When my mother gets home from her client’s, I’m in my closet, but the door is open, as is the door to my room. 

“Why, hello,” she says. I’m trying not to be irritated by everyone’s surprise at me doing normal things, because on one level I understand that it’s kind of justified, but on the other, it would be easier for me to keep on doing some of these normal things if they didn’t get such a reaction. 

What I’m doing at the moment is transferring the sketch I made of Jared’s eyes onto my closet wall. At the very top. It feels right, and it feels like something that's good for me to do, and for once, I’m not in here because I need to get away. I’m just doing my art. 

Mom glances down at the sketchbook as she’s taking off her scarf. She dresses very professionally for work, but at home, she just wants to be comfortable. Yoga pants and her old Boondock Saints t-shirt are next. 

“Wow,” she says, tapping the sketch. “That’s different.” She picks up my sketchbook, studying the drawing. “Is this someone you know?  You really captured something here.”  

“A boy I met at the museum,” I say. Not a lie. 

“I like how you did it right over the other sketch. That really works.”  She frowns slightly, peering a little closer. “That’s not one of your normal pieces, is it?”

“No. It’s _The Storm_ , by Pierre Auguste Cot. I was drawing it when I first saw him.”

“Very cool,” she says. “What do you want for dinner?”

“Cheese soufflé,” I answer. One thing that was really great about mom quitting her job as a lawyer and staying home with me is that she learned to cook. She can make about sixty-three different dishes that feature cheese. Cheese soufflé is the best. And also, doesn’t have a lot of fancy ingredients, so I am relatively sure that I can get it if I request it. 

“You got it,” she says. She starts to walk away, but then hesitates. “You met a boy?” she says.

Again, I’d really just like it if everyone stopped acting so surprised about this. Then I realize what that means. They will _never_ stop being surprised. I mean, right now, I kind of get it, kind of expect it, because this sort of thing is new to me too. But if Jared is going to be my boyfriend, which he said he is, then no matter how long I’ve been with him, no matter how well I do with this particular social skill—having a boyfriend, being in love, thinking about someone else’s needs _—_ my parents are never going to know. They’ll never be able to be part of that success. 

I look up at the top of my closet, at the expression in his eyes I’ve drawn there, and take a deep breath. “Yes,” I say, “I met a boy.”

++++++++

_ Jared _

If I were a normal person, I would have run all the way home and spent the night texting my friends and hoping that Jensen would call. 

I don’t have a phone, and even if I did, no friends to text. Green Alice will have to do. 

“What have you got to smile about?” she asks at supper. “This shit tastes like slop. If you’re that happy, go home, get out of here.”

“If I could go home, I wouldn’t be staying in a _homeless shelter,”_ I tell her, although I know it’s not true. Plenty of people choose this over home, though I would argue in those cases, “home” is probably nothing of the sort. 

She nods, picking at her baked ziti. “Ain’t that the truth. Anyway, you look like you swallowed a coat hanger. You get a little strychnine with your throrazine tonight?”

“I met a boy,” I say, and it’s true, I’m smiling so hard I can’t stop. It’s an unbelievable feeling, knowing there’s someone out there who’s thinking of me. And the incredible luck that it’s someone as amazing as Jensen. 

“Ah, I remember those days. When I met my third husband, I walked around like I was shitting rainbows for months. Too bad he got killed in an industrial laundry accident. That man was a fine specimen, let me tell you.”

I’ve gotten all of Green Alice’s husbands sorted in my head, what they did for work, how they died, and whether they were “animals” in the sack or not. Except for the fifth one. She’s mysteriously quiet about how that one died. Sometimes when she’s being a real pain in the neck, I do a little “psychic reading” act with her, and she changes her attitude towards me to deferential awe. 

Not tonight though. I don’t have a mean bone in my body tonight. I’m kind of regretting staying here tonight. For an occasion like this, being in love and all, I should have treated myself to a good hotel, but it’s the weekend, so it’s hard to find an unoccupied room. 

I’m a little anxious about tomorrow. Jensen says he’s been conscripted to help his parents with a party and won’t be going to the museum. Now that I’ve found him, I want to be with him all the time, even though I know that’s not realistic or fair. He has other people in his life, just because I don’t doesn’t mean he has to go from being a stranger to being my life support overnight. 

We tested out a couple things yesterday, and it’s amazing how much easier life would be as a normal person, or at least _with_ a normal person. We ate at the Member’s Dining Room, with table service and a waitress, and although she came back to the table once after a long stint in the kitchen and looked confused to see me there, I got my food. They made Jensen a plain cheeseburger with no condiments and my salad never tasted so good. 

He took several pictures of me with his cell phone, and we kept checking them and giggling like kids on Christmas morning. When he gets home, he plans on showing them to his mom, more than once, to see what happens. I wrote him a note to keep with him. The idea that something of mine has permanence dances around in my head like sunlight on waves. In sleep, I dream of statues in a barren field, pristine and gleaming in grey winter light. They all have my face. 

When I wake, Green Alice has died in her sleep. It’s early, and most of the residents are still asleep. No one has noticed but me. She lies on her side, eyes open and unseeing, her gnarled hand curled up under her cheek in an eerily child like pose. I creep from my cot and go find Winifred, who sleeps in the staff room on overnight shifts.

She rubs her eyes blearily when my tap at her door awakens her. “New here, honey?” She’s kind, even before she wakes. 

“I slept here last night,” I say. “But… It’s Green Alice. It looks like she died last night.”

Winifred does a little double take, like she’s going to ask me how I knew Green Alice’s name, but gets right to the business at hand. When she confirms what I saw, she wakes two other staff members, Big Mike and Jeff, who carry Alice, cot and all, into Winifred’s bedroom, quietly, so only a few residents see. 

I can’t help but hover around, not really sure how I feel or what to do. I’ve seen people die on the streets before, but Green Alice is the first one that I knew. Winifred is too busy to shoo me away. 

“… know anybody?” I hear Winifred asking Big Mike. He shrugs. Winifred wipes at the tears welling at the corner of her eye. It’s part and parcel of her job, but that doesn’t make it any easier. She’s got the coroner on the phone, and she’s nodding, jotting down a few notes. 

Jeff has come back from the lockers, a big purse and a scant armful of green clothes and starts going through the pockets. I know what this means, I know what it means for Green Alice.

People who die in New York City without friends or family to claim their bodies are sent to Hart Island. Over eight hundred and fifty thousand homeless people have been buried there over the past century, mostly in unmarked mass graves. 

Panic compresses my chest. If this were me, that’s where I would end up. No one, not one person would know. Jeff wouldn’t even know I had a locker here. Winifred would shake her head, wondering when I showed up and why of all places I had to come to hers to die. 

I hear Big Mike echo my thoughts, I hear him mutter the word _Hart_ , and I blurt out, “She had seven husbands.”

All three turn to stare at me in surprise, as if they’d forgotten me already even though I’m standing right in the doorway. It’s so much like the fears I had just been playing with in my head that my throat closes and I have to force my next words out, and they sound scratchy and thin. 

“We were talking last night. I can remember all their names and where they’re from, and I know you think I’m crazy, but if you check, you might still be able to find someone who knew her. So she won’t have to—”  My voice cuts out completely for a second. “So she won’t have to go _there_.” The last word comes out as a whisper. 

Winifred blinks a few times before recovering and then picks up her pen again. “Okay, honey,” she says. “I’m listening.”

++++++++

_ Jensen _

One way my parents are very lucky is that I’m mildly germophobic. I’m not _insanely_ so, and I don’t really have any compulsions about it, like Sheppard, that kid at my school who’s hands are always cracked and bleeding because he uses too much antibacterial sanitizer. But things like dust, which, in case you didn’t know, is composed of pet dander (our two Siamese cats), insect droppings, flour and dirt. A lot of people say that it’s mostly composed of human skin cells, which is just not true, because we shed most of our skin either in the shower or into our clothes, which end up in the wash. But the pet dander?  That’s skin cells with a healthy dose of dried saliva mixed in. Enough said. When my parents ask me to help vacuum and dust, I help vacuum and dust. 

Mom’s in the kitchen, cooking eight different types of hors d’oerves, as well as a _poire tatin,_ and chocolate espresso wafers, which are a particular favorite of Neil Pinna, who is coming to the party tonight. 

My parents do this from time to time, have too many people over and stress themselves out. My mother refers to this as “having a normal life,” and my father says it’s part of the social expectations of his job. I think they both like it though, and I can’t understand why. All this cleaning beforehand, and even more the next morning. Steve Chapman from the Winchester Gallery always drinks too much, and Cynthia Cornwallis always gets competitive. It all makes me uncomfortable, but I’m expected to at least make an appearance. Nine times out of ten, I end up giving a tour of my closet, which I don’t mind as much as you would think I would. My room is clean and interesting, nothing to be embarrassed about. 

There are certain expectations, one of which is that you do not show up hours early to a party like this. We’re still cleaning and cooking and, in my father’s case, trying to put together a music playlist that’s low key enough to not be a distraction, but interesting enough to not put everyone to sleep either. So at six PM when the doorbell rings, hours earlier than we expected anyone, we all sort of freeze and look around in panic, checking things like whether we left the toilet brush standing up on the toilet, or whether dad still has mom’s floury handprints on the seat of his pants. 

Dad recovers first and goes to the door. I keep dusting. Maybe it’s a delivery or something. 

“Why, yes, come on in,” Dad’s voice sounds exaggeratedly polite and excited, and it seems familiar, like I’ve heard him talking that way recently…

It comes to me only a moment before I see his face. That was the voice dad was using when he met Jared at the museum. And here he is. I freeze for a moment, lemon-scented furniture polish in one hand, chamois cloth in the other. 

He’s dressed in the same clothes he was wearing yesterday, soft, worn olive green cargo pants, slate blue t-shirt and army field coat. Something is different, though. His face looks strained and pale, and his shoulders are crumpled in, somehow making him look smaller. When my father steps aside, he makes this little motion like he wants to run to me, but he’s not sure, so I hold out my arms. When he launches himself into me, I hold on so, so tight. Whatever are the good, strong parts of him, I try and keep them together, contain them in the circle of my arms.

“A lady I knew from the shelter died this morning,” he whispers in my ear. “And no one knew where her family was and they were going to send her to Hart Island.”

I squeeze harder.

“I need you to help me,” he says. “That can’t happen to me. Please.”

“We’ll figure it out,” I say. I push him back a little and give him a wink. “But first, let me introduce you to my parents.”  When he smiles, a little private thing, just for me, I know I said the right thing, and I know that I’m going to say it again, and again, and again. And that’s just fine by me. 

++++++++

_ Jared _

I don’t want to stay for the party. For one thing, I wasn’t invited, for another, I’m clearly not dressed for it. Even though she’s doing the dishes and has a smudge of flour on her cheek, Jensen’s mother is in heels and pearls, and both Jensen and his father are in tailor-made suits. A brigade of help arrives shortly after I do, and I’m not even dressed nice enough to be one of them. 

You wouldn’t think it though, to hear Mr. and Mrs. Ackles. I think I could be wearing cutoffs, flip flops and a “Fuck Da Police” tank top and they’d still be looking at me like they want to put a dollop of cool whip on me and eat me with a spoon. They want me to stay, but all I had needed was that reassurance from Jensen. 

“I’ll come another time, I promise.”  

Mrs. Ackles has made me a cup of coffee, and Mr. Ackles excused himself to his office the moment he heard what I had to say about Alice, I had the distinct feeling he was “making some calls” on her behalf. It’s almost bewildering, being a part of this. Feeling connected to these people in a way that sticks. For one of them at least. 

“I have to get back to the kitchen,” Mrs. Ackles says, tying her apron back over her svelte black dress. “But let me know if you need anything.”  She disappears around the corner, and I’m alone with Jensen at last. It doesn’t feel awkward, if for no other reason than that his home looks an awful lot like an art museum, and we’ve been there before. 

“It’s not just Alice,” I say, somehow not able to add the _Green_ to her name that I always have. “I was the only one who’d ever listened to her. I was the only one who knew that stuff. I realized all of a sudden, it can’t just be you. That’s too much. I can’t—”

“You can though,” Jensen interrupts. “It’s okay. We’ll figure out—”

“I know you want to,” I say, “but even if you want to, you can’t be there all the time, forever. I think the best thing you can do to help me is figure out how we can find other people like me. Maybe if there’s other people like me, some of them have things figured out that I haven’t. I’m so glad I found you, but I want you to be… something else to me than just a tool. There’s more here,” I put my hand on my heart, “than that.”  

“Stage three,” is Jensen’s enigmatic answer. His eyes are not focused on me, kind of like he’s seeing stuff in his head more clearly than the things in front of his eyes. 

“Excuse me?” I ask. 

“I told you I had a multi-stage plan to finding you. Stage One was stick to my routine, Stage Two was watching your favorite pieces, and Stage Three was going to have to be some way of finding you out there in the world. I had some vague ideas, but…”  he trails off, far away inside his head again.

I wait. I watch his eyes dart back and forth, almost like he’s reading, or following routes on a map. His long fingers mark off counts on the table top. I hear his mother puttering in the kitchen, and the quiet feet of the hired help. Behind his office door, his father speaks softly on the phone. 

“I think… I think I have an idea,” he says at last, his eyes coming into focus and finding mine. “But we have to think of it as only one idea, it might not work, and if you can trust me, I’d rather not tell you about it right away, not until I can see if the first part will work. If it doesn’t we’ll keep thinking, right?” His fingers relax, and he reaches up to take a strand of my hair between his fingertips. “Your hair is so silky,” he says. “Look how it looks in the light. How can anyone forget that?  It must be on purpose.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not natural, it doesn’t make sense. It has to be on purpose, like God or something, and if you are the way you are on purpose, then I must be special on purpose too. The only person who can know you. How lucky am I?”

“Not half as lucky as I am. You could have been some crabby old lady or even worse, a toddler or baby too young to notice what you were noticing. Or anyone for that matter, who maybe could remember me, but didn’t realize that they were the only one. Maybe there are lots of people who can remember me, but I just have bad luck noticing them.”

“Maybe, but I don’t think so. You’ve got a dozen or so years of random sampling. Plus, I like my theory better.”  He smiles, and rubs his knuckle on my cheek. 

I’ve finished my coffee, and I feel better, just knowing that he gets how important this is, and that I’m not alone in this any more. It’s starting to get dark, which means the guests will be showing up any minute and Jensen still needs to put on his tie. If I slip out the door now, neither his mother nor father will ever know I’ve been here. Strangely, that makes it a little easier to leave. No awkward goodbyes. 

“If we ever get separated again, let’s make it our thing to meet at _The Storm_ ,” I say. “That worked out perfectly.”

“Meet me there tomorrow, and I’ll tell you if the first part of the plan worked,” Jensen answers. 

I love how that sounds. The first part. It implies other parts to come. It implies a chain of events beginning and ending with us working together. A beginning that doesn’t have to end before I’m ready. 

 

_ Jensen _

I really think this has a chance of working. I stand in my closet, looking up at the last sketch I transferred up there, Jared’s eyes scrawled over the backdrop of my sketch of _The Storm._

The word _last_ can have two meanings in this case. It can mean _most recent_ or it can mean _final._ Both apply in this case. Something feels complete and done, and stepping back and looking at it as a whole piece, rather than as a collection of separate pieces, it’s actually quite good. It tells a story, rich with detail, an interesting story. It’s the sort of piece where the more you look at it, the more you see, the more layers of meaning and narrative appear. 

And autism has a certain sort of cache these days. It seems to be the fashionable diagnosis, and art by artists with autism is a hot commodity on the market. I did some research, and in 2013, Stephen Wiltshire, a man with autism, flew over New York City in a helicopter, and then drew the city in amazing detail over the course of the next three months. That piece sold at Southeby’s for sixteen million. Cynthia Cornwallis and Neil Pinna were both at that evening auction and lost out to the eventual buyer. 

They’ve already both offered to buy it from me. I try and picture it as a triptych, lifted whole from the wall, mounted in a gallery. This is something I know Neil and Cynthia have also pictured in their minds. I see glitter in their eyes when they look at it. They covet it. 

Selling it would be no problem. But selling it is not going to be good enough. We need to make the news. 

And for that, I need a little fear. And nothing strikes fear into the heart of people like Cynthia and Neil like thinking that someone is going to get in on the latest trend before them. 

The party is well underway when I leave my room and join the glitterati assembled in my living room. Mom is glowing, because she had invited that actress from _The West Wing,_ and it was probably going to be the sort of thing where she checked in for a few minutes and then left for some better party with higher quality people, but instead she ended up staying _and_ calling the producer who showed up half an hour later because his wife is a big patron of the arts. 

Neil Pinna and Cynthia Cornwallis are both there, along with a pretty good assortment of private collectors and dealers, several gallery owners and several artist hopefuls who want to be noticed as part of the “scene.”

Speaking of which, there’s a cluster of young artists standing near Cynthia, probably with the same ulterior motive as me. They all talk a little over loud, with flamboyant hand gestures and little side glances to see if she’s listening. 

“The things she does with liquid glass, just amazing,” one heavily pierced red-haired man is saying. “Jensen, what do you think?  Have you been to the State Street Exchange Gallery yet?”

They all know me. I’ve been a standard feature at these parties since I was old enough to toddle around between the stilettos and wingtips. 

“No, but I thought I’d bring my portfolio down next week. They put out a call for submissions.” 

“I didn’t know you made art too,” Amelie Stewart says, she’s relatively new to the scene, she does negative space splatter paintings, they’re actually quite interesting. The others give her scathing looks. 

“Oh, you absolute _lamb_ ,” exclaims Hillard Deutsch. He owns the Elan Chance restaurant in the upper east side, and fancies that he has the inside scoop on everything. Most people flatter him because the chef at Elan Chance is actually one of the best in New York, and it never hurts to be in with the owner at a restaurant like that. “You simply _must_ see some of Jensen’s work. He’s a complete _marvel.”_

I think he’s the most boring person that regularly makes mom’s guest list, but he’s caught the ear of Cynthia and the dealer that she’s chatting with, so I try not to be too irritated. 

Amelie raises a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “Oh, really?” she says. 

“He’s certainly very talented,” Cynthia chimes in, edging over to our group, raising the average age by about twenty years and average annual income by a few dozen million. “In fact, I’ve been after one of his pieces for years.”

A small crowd is starting to gather. I’m just a regular old party trick. It’s never bothered me before, like I said, my room is clean, and my art is nothing to hide. But somehow, right now, the predictability of this scene feels patronizing to me. I push those thoughts aside, because that’s the point. I wanted this to happen, and I knew just what I could do to make it happen. 

“Yes,” Neil chimes in, not to be outdone by Cynthia. “His work has generated a lot of interest in the community. One piece in particular, which I am sure he will not forget, he’s promised me the right of first refusal.”

I’ve promised him no such thing, and he knows it. He just said it to get a rise out of Cynthia. It works. Her face flushes and blotchy spots appear on her chest. 

I pretend not to notice. Casually, I say, to neither of them in particular, although I know they’re both hanging on my every word now, “Actually, I just finished it yesterday. I think I might—”

“You _finished_ it?” Cynthia gasps. “We _must_ see.”  

This has also caught my father’s attention. He knows the closet isn’t a piece of art for me, but rather a form of therapy. I’m sure he doesn’t know whether to be proud of me or worried if I say I’m done with it. 

“I’d love to see it,” Amelie says, her voice low and different in a way I can’t put my finger on. She’s standing very close, her hand lightly on my arm. Then my mother comes and literally pushes herself between us. 

“You don’t have to,” she says. She’s always recognized how people treat me at these parties. 

“No, that’s okay,” I say. “I don’t mind.”

Once the small troupe surrounding me detaches from the party and shuffles down the hall to my room, eyebrows are raised, and several people tag along, afraid to be left out of something that such luminaries as Cynthia and Neil are part of. 

My room is large and neat, with a window seat for reading looking over the Blaine Street green. I have several pieces of original art that my parents have had me collect over the years, including a few Whistler sketches that my father won at auction. I let my mom take care of the décor, and it’s actually a very soothing room to be in, with shades of grey the color of river stones, and soft lighting.

The closet is particularly large for a New York brownstone, this room was probably originally intended as the master bedroom. The French doors open into a seven by ten foot room, empty. At least some of the gasps from the entourage are for the enviable size of the closet, rather than the art on the walls. As they filter in, exclaiming here and there over details that catch their eye both Neil and Cynthia vie for the proprietary role; Neil is pointing out features as if he’s giving a tour in his own museum, Cynthia is scolding people not to touch, as if it’s her own already. 

“Well, Jenny,” Neil says. His use of my nickname, Jenny, which no one ever calls me is his way of trying to make it look like we are on more intimate terms than we are. It’s not that he’s a sleazy guy, this is just his business, and he’s good at it. “Now that you’re done, have you reconsidered my offer?”

The room goes quiet, all eyes turned towards me. If you used my MARA 3D facial expressions app to look up the look on the artists in the group’s faces, you’d see “unabashedly envious.”  Cynthia’s might come in under “unbridled avarice.” Behind her, there’s a quiet collector I don’t know, and his face would be “quietly crafty.”

“Maybe.”  I say. I try to make it sound like I’m not overly interested. Like I care more about what brand of swiss cheese my mom buys (which I actually care about a _lot_ ) then whether or not anyone wants to buy my closet walls. “I would only be interested in a very specific type of buyer, under very specific circumstances, and frankly, I don’t think my expectations are very realistic.”

There’s a crush forward and an incoherent babble of reassuring noises. Cynthia and one other lady reach out their hands, presumably to reassure me, but all of a sudden, it’s too much for me. I step back and shut down. I did what I needed to do, everything is in place, now I need to get out. I know I’m being rude, but I just walk away without another word. 

++++++++

_ Jared _

I’m staying in a hotel tonight. After seeing Jensen, I stopped back at the shelter to see what, if anything was happening with the Alice situation, but I’d lost my status as the boy who had found her, and I was just another new stray, no one wanted to talk to me, and Alice was one of their own, I wasn’t part of their grief. The way they closed their ranks to protect the privacy of their emotions left me feeling too alone, too sad. So I left and came here.

I love staying in hotels. Who wouldn’t?  I realize that for some people, the comfort of their own bed and familiar home is preferable, but lacking that, it’s this, a cot in the shelter, or on the street, so of course this wins, hands down, every time, save for the little bit of guilt associated with treating myself to this, something that’s definitely not an option for all the other homeless people I know. 

When I stay in a hotel like this, I bring pajamas and a change of clothes from my locker at Grand Central Station. Usually when I sleep in the shelter, I just sleep in my clothes. You would definitely get the side-eye from the other residents if you took the time to go into a bathroom stall and change into pajamas. But here, I don’t even need to go into the bathroom. Once I’m in the room, all this space is mine. I change right in the middle of the room and no one sees, no one makes comments, no one laughs and calls me a newbie. 

I slide under the high thread count sheets, and mentally scroll through the residents at the shelter. Now that Alice is gone, I might actually be the oldest resident there. Oldest, as in “spent the most time there,” not oldest in oldest age. Sam Francis is probably the oldest, he might be somewhat over eighty. He’s one of those people that defy the odds, smokes like a chimney, eats nothing but coffee and processed meats, receives absolutely no health care whatsoever, but keeps ticking. Someone should have given him a job and put him to good use a long time ago, but he just stays at the shelter because no one bothers him there. 

He’s only been there four years though, and I started staying at the shelter seven years ago. Most people move on, one way or another. Die. Get work. Reconcile with family. With my head on this ultra soft pillow, my feet warm, belly full, it’s easier to hope. Easier to let my thoughts drift into the realm of possibilities, ways that I might change my life. 

I’m willing to work, but can’t hold a job. Even temp agencies lose my paperwork in the course of a morning. Selling photos, walking dogs is one thing, I can afford a few sets of clothes, shoes, winter boots and a warm winter coat, a meal in a restaurant now and then, but an apartment?  In New York?  That’s a whole different story.

The obvious answer, is of course that Jensen is the solution. That somehow we could get an apartment together, and I’d do whatever I could to contribute, and he could bring me to the urgent care clinic if I needed to go and stay with me and not let the nurses forget I’m there, and make sure the pharmacists fill my damn order so I can get the medicine I need. 

And now I’m crying. I try not to feel sorry for myself, but something about Green Alice’s death and the specter of Hart Island has got me thinking about how I won’t be young forever. I’ve figured out a lot of things, come up with a lot of strategies. Most days, it just feels like normal. I’ve never known anything different. I’m not sure how long I will be able to do it though. So far I’ve been lucky. But what if I start to go crazy as I get older?  What if I get one of the big ones- cancer, diabetes?  I’m going to need help. 

I meant what I said to Jensen earlier today though. What I feel for him is more than all this. I don’t want our relationship to be about how he can help me. I want to love him for him, not what he can do for me.

That’s why it feels so important to find others. What would that be like?  I imagine living in an apartment with two or three other people like me. Every day, you’d wake up to find a bunch of strangers living in your house. And you’d be a stranger to them. But for once, it would be okay. They’d believe you, because they’ve been living it too. Breakfast every morning would be re-introduction time. On the other hand, maybe we would be able to remember each other.

I snuggle down under the heavy, rich blankets, drifting in and out of dreams and imagination, playing through scenarios where I have friends, and lasting relationships and something resembling a normal life. 

When I wake, the city is still dark. I pad over to the window in my bare feet and pajamas and look out over the lights and pre-dawn traffic. Out there somewhere. How to find them?  Jensen says he might have a plan. What could it be?  What would get _my_ attention, for example?  What sort of message would let me know what to do?  

It’s still an hour until Lindy’s diner opens, and another three after that until the museum opens and I can see Jensen. I turn on the shower and get in, letting the hot water beat down on me and continue the daydreams that I had last night. Would there be any way to get scientists to study us?  I laugh, picturing the faces on the scientists who show up each morning to be debriefed by the night shift charged with watching us solid for eight hours so we don’t get forgotten. If you can’t laugh at your own predicaments in life, you might as well cash in your cards, because what’s the point?

I decide to treat myself again, and enjoy the continental breakfast at the hotel rather than go to Lindy’s. In fact, I don’t understand why more homeless people don't take advantage of this. As long as you’re wearing clean clothes and don’t smell too badly, you can walk into nearly any hotel and eat the breakfast. They never check, and gone are the days when someone would even raise an eyebrow at someone eating breakfast in their pajamas and slippers. 

I serve myself fresh fruit, fragrant honeydew and cantaloupe, beautiful flawless strawberries. We get fruit at the shelter, but it’s old and tired, flavorless. Here, I can literally smell the tangy sweetness as I walk to my seat. The dining room is full, so I share a table with two young socialites glued to their twitter accounts. 

“Did you see Gina’s?” one asks the other. Her hair is a bird’s nest of cotton candy pink and blue, as seems to be the fashion now. 

The other, an anorexic drinking black coffee with Splenda, shrugs noncommittally without looking up from her phone. 

“She was at some art party, and some retard is _trying_ to sell his _closet._ What the fuck?”

This does get the skinny one’s attention. Her dark eyes turn towards her friend. “No, I actually heard about that, I read it on _Art Start._ He’s not a retard, and you’re not supposes to call them that anyway, even if they are. But anyway, he’s got _autism_ , and it’s not just his closet. There’s speculation it might go for millions at auction. Cecil Palmer was there, and he said Cynthia Cornwallis and Neil Pinna nearly came to blows over it. Oh!  And that actress we hate from _West Wing_ was there. How the hell did Gina get into that party?”

“She’s dating this body artist in the Village,” says Cotton Candy Hair. 

“You mean a tattoo artist,” says her friend, rolling her eyes. 

“No, no, he’s really good. He did that work on…”

But I don’t hear who he did the work on, because I’m out of there. Autistic boy?  Art party?  The chances that it’s _not_ Jensen they are talking about are next to zero, right?  What’s all this about a closet worth millions?  

The museum can’t open soon enough. 

++++++++

_ Jensen _

“You don’t have to do this,” my mother is saying. We’re eating leftovers from the party for breakfast, except my dad, who’s eating aspirin, chewing the tablets as he winces at the acrid taste. He’s always claimed that’s the way to do it for a hangover. 

“Of course he doesn’t,” Dad says. “It’s yours, don’t let them bully you into anything.”

I take a bite of cheesecake, perhaps the ultimate in cheese-related desserts. It’s thick and creamy, and if dad really wanted to cure his hangover, he’d have a slice of this instead. “I want to sell it, but I’m serious about the terms. If I can’t get some sort of guarantee on the terms, I won’t do it. Period. I don’t care if I get five cents or five million.”

“Just out of curiosity, what are your terms?” Mom hands dad an ice pack and a cup of steaming black coffee.

“No private collections,” I say. That’s the most important thing. “It has to be on public display for at least one year.”

“Ego, much?” Dad says. He’s not in a very charitable mood. 

“James,” Mom chides. 

“It’s not because of that,” I say. "It’s a message. I want to help someone, and that won’t happen if they never see it.”

My parents take this statement in stride. Over the years, they’ve learned there’s just some things about me they don’t understand and won’t ever understand. 

“What else?”  Dad takes a sip of his scalding hot coffee and winces some more. 

“That was the hard one,” I say. “The other is that I name it, and the name can’t be changed. Or abbreviated.”

“That seems easy enough,” Mom says. She sits down with a plate of spanikopita, tapenade and shrimp cocktail and pours herself a mimosa. She’s got an iron stomach. 

Dad shrugs, eyes closed underneath the ice pack. “Easy, but if that’s what you want, you gotta let them know. In today’s business, they’ll call it whatever they think will sell.”

“What do you want to call it?” mom asks. 

“I’m not one hundred percent sure,” I say, and I look out the window. I just want to enjoy my cheesecake. My mother makes really, really good cheesecake. I’m pretty sure my plan is going to work, and unlike my father, I drank water and cranberry juice at the party last night and went to bed before three in the morning, so I’m feeling pretty good. Plus, I get to see Jared again today. I feel good enough about the plan that I can tell him about it. Right now, I just get to bask in my secrets. It feels pretty good. 

Mom’s phone dings, and she gives it a casual glance. “Nancy says our party got mentioned in the NYSD.”

Dad rolls his eyes, even though they’re closed. NYSD stands for New York Social Diary, and he pretends it’s beneath him to care about things like that, but he’s really secretly proud. Proud of mom, really. 

“Trent Castoway wrote about it on his blog too. It’s gotten quite the buzz. Nice press for Jensen’s art.”  

This is just what I wanted. Getting the message out there. I need to name it, and fast. But I want Jared to help with that. I glance at the clock. One hour until the museum opens. 

On the subway, the woman next to me is eating a sausage, egg and cheese biscuit from McDonald’s and I don’t even care. The bar on the turnstile to get out of the subway got stuck, and I had to touch it with my hands, and I didn’t even care. When I got to the museum, I was seventeen minutes early, which is not only an odd number, but a sharp prime number as well, and I especially didn’t care, because Jared was there waiting for me on the stairs, his shaggy hair spilling over her face, cheeks flushed, out of breath. He’s looking decidedly on the higher end of the medium-handsome scale. 

“You’re wearing the same clothes you were yesterday,” I say when he notices me. He shrugs. “I only have three different t-shirts. Usually, no one notices.”

“I want to tell you about the plan,” I say. 

“Stage three?” He asks, and then reaches out behind my neck and pulls me close. “Can I kiss you first?” he asks, and all thoughts of stage three promptly vanish. 

He’s so close, and smells like the lemongrass ginger hand lotion that they use at the Hilton hotels. His lips are soft and warm and I never understood why people want to do this; press their lips together. I still don’t understand, but I’ve joined the ranks of people who want to. I hold him close, one hand on the small of his back after the kiss is over. “That was really, really nice,” I say. 

“Tell me about your closet,” he answers. 

++++++++

_ Jared _

It’s such a beautiful day in New York that I convince Jensen to walk in Central Park with me instead of going into the museum. 

“I have to text my mom and let her know,” he says. “And then she’s going to send me about five million texts asking me if I’m okay, because Central Park is not part of my schedule, and it usually takes something on the scale of a sewer main breaking in the museum to change my schedule.”

“I’m flattered, then,” I say. “On par with a sewer main.”  

“You should be,” he says, completely deadpan. “You’re the first new door I’ve opened in a long, long time. It doesn’t matter to me if we’re at the museum or a bus station, I just want to find out what’s inside.”

“Speaking of doors…” I prompt. “Your closet? What the heck is that all about?”

“How did you know about that?” he says. He is suddenly on alert, eyes sharp, glittering bright. But in a nice way. 

I explain about the girls at the hotel and the tweets. I leave out the word _retard._ As I tell him about what happened, his smile grows wider and wider until I have to kiss him again because he’s so beautiful. 

“Perfect,” he says at last. At first I think he’s talking about the kiss, but when I look at him, his eyes are far away, calculating, like they were yesterday when we were talking about stage three. “It’s already showing it could work, if you heard about it.”

“What?” I ask. He’s doing that thing again where he kind of forgets that I don’t know everything that he knows. 

“If we were going to get a message out to people who might be like you, it needed to be something huge, something that got out in the news and all kinds of people would be talking about it. It already reached one person like you: _you_.”

“Wait, wait, you’re going too fast.”  I take his hand and pull him down onto a park bench. We can sit here and watch the carriages go by and maybe if we stop moving forward down the path, he can slow down his explanation of what the heck is going on. 

“Take a deep breath, and start from the beginning. What message?  What does this have to do with your closet?”

Jensen does what I say. He takes a deep breath, and pulls his cell phone out of his satchel. “Okay,” he says. “Ever since I was little, I drew on the walls inside my closet. My parents pulled all the shelves and stuff out of the closet in my room, and gave me art supplies. Whenever I needed to be alone, to get away from noise and irritations, I’d go in there and draw. Over the years, I’ve gotten quite a bit better. But that’s not the point of it. The point of it is that you can see my abilities develop over the years, top to bottom, as I grew and could reach higher and higher on the canvas. Plus, if you want insight into a person’s mind, what better way to study them than by looking at the art they create?  Anyone who’s interested in what was going on in this autistic head of mine would give anything to get a peek inside this closet, right?”

I nod, although I’m not quite putting this together with what this has to do with stage three. 

“So, over the years, I’ve had several offers for it.”

I frown. “For your closet?  How can someone buy your closet?”  

“There are more unusual canvases. Think of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. You’ve seen the hieroglyphics, and the mosaics, how about the ceiling that’s on my schedule? If someone wants the walls of my closet, they’ll find a way.”

“So, you’ve found someone to buy your closet?” I’m beginning to wonder if maybe this is all just a delusion of some sort. 

“Not yet, and anyway, that’s still not the point. If someone just buys the closet, who cares?  That doesn’t do anything to help you. Anyway, I never thought about selling it before, because it wasn’t done. It didn’t mean anything. But the day before yesterday, I added this piece to it, and all of a sudden, it was done. It somehow all came together.”

He shows me the picture on his phone, and I gasp. It had seemed crazy before, this idea of someone buying a closet as a piece of art, but once I see it, I understand. It’s crazy beautiful. It’s the sort of thing where your eyes want to go everywhere at once and everywhere you look you see something intriguing. The whole picture all together, as well as each minute detail make you want to just keep looking and looking. It’s a staggering amount of work. 

“How long…?” I ask, but my words trail off as I zoom in and out on different parts of the picture. 

“Fifteen or so years,” he says. He sounds like there’s a smile in his voice, like he’s waiting for me to see some sort of surprise, to “get” something I haven’t gotten yet. 

And that’s when I see it. The sketch he made of my eyes, at the very pinnacle of the piece. He’s right. Somehow, it ties it all together in a way that feels satisfying and complete. More than that…

“Did it stay?” I ask. “Did people see it? Is it still there?” All thoughts of Stage Three have left my head. This was something we had planned on doing “someday,” to see if he drew me if the drawing would be permanent, not like my notes or photos of me. 

He nods. “Yes. Three days later now and I brought my mother in to talk about it this morning, and it’s still there, she still sees it, she remembers commenting on the sketch the first time she saw it.” He puts the phone away. “Anyway, this is all just a vehicle for Stage Three. We knew that if we wanted to get a message out, we would need a wide scatter, something that everyone would see, because by definition we can’t target any particular person. It had to be something that the average person on the street would see or hear about.

“From the beginning, I thought that maybe my parent’s connections could help us out, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it had to be something that _we_ did, because we can’t count on anyone else to believe us or understand what we’re doing and why. I was still trying to figure out something that we could do on a big scale when I finished the closet, and all of a sudden, I knew I had something that could get people talking. All I needed to do was to make sure that they were talking about the message I wanted to get out.”

“I still don’t understand.” I scan the picture for this “message” of his. If I can’t understand it, what hope is there that anyone else will understand, people who don’t know him?  People who aren’t aware that a message is being directed at them?

“We have to name it,” he says. “The title has to be the message. Instructions.” 

It’s slowly coming to me, I’m kind of getting it. But I’m thinking of all the paintings I know, and nothing comes to mind that sounds like instructions. “What did you have in mind?” I ask.

“We need a who, what and where,” he says. ‘The _who_ is people like you. The _what_ is what we want them to do: gather somewhere we can find them, and the _where_ is that place.”

“That sounds like an… interesting title.” I say dubiously. It’s no _Starry Night._

“Exactly. That will be part of what makes it work. If I named it _Untitled,_ or _Therapy Sketch,_ no one would care or notice. But with a title that’s a message like we have in mind, people will be going crazy to figure it out. It will create buzz. Which is what I was doing last night, by the way. I haven’t even sold the painting yet, and people are already talking about it. If it goes to auction, that will be in the news. I’m pretty sure with Neil Pinna and Cynthia Cornwallis interested in it, we can broker a deal with Southeby’s or Christie’s. So what are we going to call it?”

I turn this strange idea of his over in my head. It’s no less crazy than sky writing, and it sounds like something that we could actually pull off. “You mean like… _If You Are a Person that No One Can Remember, Meet on the Stairs of the Met Sunday, August Twelfth?”_ Even I know how stupid that sounds, but Jensen sounds so confident, so sure of his idea, that I have to at least try to get what the heck he’s talking about.

“You’re limiting it too much. Why only once?  Why not name a permanent place?  And just say that you made the meeting place the Met… that’s too broad. Lots of people are on the stairs of the Met every Sunday. You’d never know who was there for _you._ Which, I suppose,” he’s thinking out loud now, “Is going to be a problem wherever we make the meeting place, but we can at least narrow down the real estate. 

He’s quiet for a moment, his eyes thinking and distant. “How about, _If No One Can Remember You, Meet Here?”_

“What do you mean, _here_?” I ask. I’m trying to think of how I would react if I heard about a painting named that. 

“At the painting,” he answers. “That’s half the point. The painting is not only the message, but also the beacon, the homing point. It won’t be like a message in the newspaper or tweet that gets re-tweeted. Those would only be effective for a one-shot, and then they’d disappear. But with a painting called that, it will stay. At least for a little while. I want establish public display for at least one year as stipulation of the sale.”

I close my eyes and shut out the park. I let the noises of the couples walking by, the cooing of the pigeons at our feet, the clip-clop of the carriage horse’s hooves fade into the background, and I try to imagine how I would react if I heard about a art work named _If No One Can Remember You, Meet Here._ There is no doubt. I’d be there every day. I’d make myself a t-shirt that said _No One Can Remember Me,_ and I would be a god-damned _groupie_ for that piece of art. I’d go every day. I laugh, because I realize that no one, except Jensen would realize that I was going every day. And maybe, just maybe, someday someone would approach me…

“I love it,” I say, opening my eyes. “It’s a brilliant plan.”

“It might not work,” he says. “But like I said, we can just think of it as the first thing we try.”

“It’s a pretty amazing first try,” I say. 

“The key will be to keep it in the public eye. It’s practically a performance piece, if you think about it.”

I’m on board now, rolling along with him. “The thing is, if it was just your painting, it might only catch the attention of people in the art world. But the title. If I heard that in passing on the subway, I would full body tackle the person who said those words and ask them what they were talking about.”

“Exactly,” he answers. We might not reach everybody, but we have no idea how common you are. What if you are a lot more common than we know?  You all would be like invisible people, living among us undetected. We’d. Never. Know. Let’s limit our numbers to just New York City. Let’s say that only a tenth of the people in the city hear about the painting. There’s close to nine million people living in New York City, so that would be nine hundred thousand people hearing about the painting. 

“Let’s say that people like you are one in a million, which is totally arbitrary, you could be one in a billion. Or one in forty two thousand. We have no way of knowing, so as long as we’re day dreaming, we’ll go with one in a million. That would mean that if nine hundred thousand people hear about the painting, there would be a ninety percent chance that one of them was someone like you. What do you think the odds are that if someone like you heard about this painting, they would go to the painting?”

“One hundred percent,” I say. “No doubt in my mind.”  

“Okay, but that’s assuming that when we say _someone like you,_ we mean someone who has the intellectual and physical means of understanding what it means and getting to the painting. Little kids or insane individuals, we have to count them out.”

I realize that I could not have found a better person to do this with me. Forget about the ridiculous luck involved with finding someone who happens to have a closet that’s in hot demand in the art world, but who else would have thought this through so thoroughly?  Who would show that he gets it, right down to those little details. 

“Let’s say that only one third of the people like you would have the means to act on the message if they heard of it. That brings us down to a thirty percent chance of it working.”

“And by working, you mean _one_ person, going to visit the painting at least once?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” I say. “That would mean that I would have to be there, looking for them, every day, all day.”

“Have you got something better to do?” he asks. “Wait. I mean something more _important_ to do. Because if it were me, this would be the most important thing in my life.”

My heart sinks a little bit. I do have other things to do. Like he says, nothing more important, but there _are_ things I need to do to survive. Right now, for instance, I should be taking photos or walking dogs, or seeing if I can find a place to wash dishes at for an hour or so through the lunch rush. I can’t stand in an art gallery all day, every day.

“It’s like an investment though,” he says, reading my thoughts. “Imagine the payout. And I’ll help.”  He takes my hand, thumb rubbing the center of my palm. “I wonder…”

I let him think it though, whatever he’s wondering. A beautiful team of grey percherons clops by, the couple in the seat oblivious to the entire world around them. Some days, I go down to the flower market and buy tens of bunches of fresh blooms then make them into bouquets to sell to these couples. You’re supposed to have a license, which is something I can’t do, but the cops do little more than shoo me away any time they catch me. I don’t care, they catch me several times a day and never know what a repeat offender I am. The weather is supposed to be really nice for all of today, maybe I can still make it down to the market and get a discount on some of the seconds. 

“I wonder,” he says at last, bringing my thoughts back to the present. “If you’re the only one I would be able to remember. I mean, if we met more people like you. Is this something that works only for you?  Or would I be able to remember anybody like you?”

“I was kind of wondering something myself,” I say. I’m a little nervous to bring this up, because I don’t know yet what things he’s sensitive about. “I wonder if it’s your… if it’s because of the way…”

“Because I have autism?” he asks. Matter of fact, as if he was saying _is it because my eyes are green?_ No big deal.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m sorry, that was a dumb idea.”  

“Not really. It’s the exact same thing I was asking you. Both of us have ways we’re different. But your thing is actually something we could test. Easily, today. I know other people with autism. We could—”

“Maybe not today,” I interrupt. I feel so good, sitting here today with him, and we have the huge, huge secret, just the two of us, and we’re going to try and pull this amazing magic trick together, and I like that. I don’t want to share this day or this feeling or this project with anyone else, at least not for now. There will be time to expand this team, but it can wait.

“If we find someone else who can remember you,” he says, "they might not necessarily be able to help, depending on their degree of autism. And the memory thing, that’s not universal. In fact, there’s pretty much not anything about autism that’s universal, not even within one person. Some days I’m more ‘autistic’ than others.” 

I have noticed that today, he’s doing really well. He’s off schedule, and he appears perfectly calm and unruffled. And even if he wasn’t, I don’t care. I’m the last person on earth who would push someone away because they were a little different. “If there is someone else who can remember me,” I say, “That doesn’t change anything about _us_ ,” I say.

“I know.”

“Do you think if I was normal, and we met, that we still would have… been interested?” I ask.

“Are you kidding me?  You knew there were two _Carmencitas_. I knew then that you were the only boy for me.” 

I take his hand, and for that moment, we’re like any other couple in the park. In love. 

++++++++

_ Jensen _

I’ve already mentioned how my internal clock is very accurate. I also have a lot of different tallies running in my head all the time. The number of times my mother has lost her reading glasses. The number of times my father has watched _Shawshank Redemption,_ the number of times I have dreamt about flying. 

The number of times Jared has met my parents is a little harder to pin down. For one thing, there’s a different number for the number of times he’s met my father, met my mother, or met both of them at the same time. For another, it’s hard to tell if we should count each time he’s at my house as one “meeting,” or if I should count the number of times I’ve had to introduce him to my mother and father. 

Tonight is just ridiculous, and if it weren’t for the fact that Jared finds it amusing, I would find it extremely stressful. Also, we are playing Memory, which I am extremely good at, and has very simple rules, so that helps too. 

I think it’s good for me, having Jared to keep me steady during all these very unusual situations. I can tolerate stuff now that just months ago would have been impossible to cope with. I don’t just mean uncomfortable for me, I mean _impossible_.

“Oh!” my father exclaims when he re-enters the living room. “We have a visitor!”  

The expression of confusion that passes over my mother’s face is very brief, fleeting. “Yes, this is Jared, a friend of Jensen’s. He came in while you were… while you were in the office.”

Father extends his hand. “Very nice to meet you Jared.” He scans the game in front of us. “Mind if I join in?”  

Now, here’s the _really_ weird thing. Father had been playing with us before he had to take a call in his office, and had found three matches. Now those six tiles are back on the table face down. I’ve been watching as carefully as I can all night, and I’ve never seen it happening, but somehow it does. A few times already. I can remember exactly where those tiles are, they’re in the same place they were before, but no one else can, not even Jared. But that might just because the three of them are dreadfully bad at this game. 

That’s not the point though. The point is that there is a literal physical change in reality. Just like when Jared says his room in his mother’s home had changed after his mother forgot him. Not remembering him is one thing, people forget stuff all the time. But this is something else altogether. 

I’ve thought about this a lot, and it doesn’t make any sense. Nothing about Jared makes any sense, including why I can remember him when no one else can. You might think this would really mess me up. It doesn’t. I understand a very limited amount of things in the world. Close your eyes. Picture a blue butterfly landing on a leaf. Where in your physical brain is the “screen” where that picture is displayed?  This is something I don’t understand. I can see the picture, but what’s the canvas?  I don’t understand that, but I don’t let it drive me crazy. 

So, this was one of our tests. What happens when one person stays with Jared while another one leaves and comes back. The answer is that the person who leaves forgets him, and the person who stays remembers only about five minutes back. Mother has forgotten about when Jared arrived and everyone was introduced. She’s forgotten that my father was there. And of course, my father doesn’t remember it either. 

It _is_ kind of driving me crazy having to answer the same questions over and over though. This isn’t a fair thought, but it makes me feel like my parents are stupid. I know they’re not. 

“Since you’re just coming in, why don’t you go first?” my mother tells my father.

Father turns over a grasshopper and a strawberry. 

“So,” he says as he turns them back over. “What did I miss?  How do you know Jensen?”

I notice that mother turns her head to listen too, as if she hadn’t heard the answer before either. 

“At the museum.” I say.

“At _La Carmencita_ ,” Jared says. “I saw Jensen sketching it, and before I knew it, I knew more about the painting and the model than I ever wanted to know.”  

My parents laugh. 

“I work at the museum, and Jensen still teaches me things every day.”

It goes on like this. Somehow, Jared tells things a different way each time, but always tells the truth. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t get bored or upset about it. I think about this happening to him every day, all day, having to say the same things to the same people over and over again. He is amazing. 

I’ve never wished that I didn’t have autism. I’m fortunate to be on the “high functioning” end of the spectrum. I’m relatively intelligent, and I’ve worked hard to practice the skills that come naturally to neurotypical people. But I’ll never be able to do it like Jared does, and a little bit of me wishes that some of that would get on me, kind of the way that at first I was worried that his weirdness would get on me. 

Huh. Think of that. It did, and I survived. Now, I never want to be without it. I reach under the table and take Jared’s hand. He squeezes it gently, and I smile. 

The look on my mother’s face is priceless. I could sell it to the MARA 3D facial expressions people, because it’s not in their app. It’s three expressions combined- “surprise,” “joy,” and “trying to hide your surprise and joy.”

_ Jared _

“The ceiling is smooth,” I say, lying back on the hard wood floor of Jensen’s closet. He’s sitting, arms hugging his knees. He says he’s had people in here before, but it still seems like he’s nervous about me being in here. He taps on the floor with his fingers on his left side, away from me. Maybe he thinks I don’t notice, so I pretend I don’t. 

Jensen glances up. “I know,” he says. 

“You could draw up there.”

Now he looks up for longer, really looking this time. “I never thought about it. I think… I think I’ve never been relaxed enough in here to lay down and look at the ceiling like that.”

“Try it,” I say. 

Jensen looks almost scared for a moment, his eyes taking a quick trip to wherever he goes when he needs to be in his own head for a while. The difference is amazing really; one minute, he’s Jensen, with these amazing, smiling eyes, the next minute, he’s a shell. But it’s only a fleeting moment this time, and he lays down stiffly with his head on my stomach. I card my fingers through his hair, and feel him relax against me. 

He laughs quietly. “I could be the autistic Michelangelo.” And then, even quieter, “If we were really, really quiet, my parents would forget you’re here, and you could stay.”

“Would you… would you want that?” I ask. I’m not really sure exactly what I’m asking. When he says “stay here,” does he mean just like this, his head resting on me, looking up at his ceiling, or does he mean… like what someone else would mean if they wanted you to spend the night. 

His voice takes on an uncharacteristic huskiness when he answers. “I’m not sure what I would like. I’m not sure what would be too much.” He reaches back and slides his hand under my neck. “But I know I don’t want you to leave. Can we just try and see?” 

He tugs slightly and pulls my face to his. I kiss him for an answer, and push it, just a little, exploring to see if he’ll let me taste his mouth. He stiffens at first, almost pulls back, but then opens up to me. 

Since I started kissing Jensen, I’ve thought a lot about kissing, because that’s one of the things Jensen makes me do- think about things in a way I never have before. And it’s weird. Why do people kiss?  Why does pushing our mouths together mean anything?  So you would think that kissing Jensen would be a little awkward, because all of a sudden I’m thinking about lips and tongues and it should be kind of gross, really, but it’s not. All the feeling that’s supposed to be there sort of trumps the logical, cognitive part of this. It’s like… I want to be so close with him, and this is a way to be that; closer than you can be with any other person. 

When he opens up his mouth to me, it’s him saying, yeah, me too. 

I’m not sure I’ve ever been this physically close to another person before. As he slides around onto his side next to me, we line up, hip to hip, and he feels thin but not fragile, warm and for me, so real. Like, every other person I’ve ever met is here and gone, and they might as well be figments of my imagination. But I can see each of the freckles that spatter the skin over his nose, and I pick one out, and I know that tomorrow I can look and still find the same one.

His lips are soft and gentle, and he closes his eyes when he kisses, his golden lashes resting on his cheeks. But that’s not what makes it so good. It’s just that it’s him. 

I’ve slept on the ground before. It doesn’t bother me. But Jensen gets uncomfortable. We move to the bed. He settles back down with his head in the crook of my shoulder looking up at the ceiling, the soft spikes of his hair tickling my neck. 

“There’s no cure for autism,” he says. 

“I know.”

“So it’s weird that I think I can do this, that I don’t need my closet any more, because I am always going to need something.”

“You don’t have to. You can always back out. Everyone would understand.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I really think I can do it. What I mean is… I’m always going to need something, but now, it doesn’t need to be that.” He gestures toward the closet. When his hand comes back down, it finds mine, and his fingers wind through mine and he brings our hands to his chest. 

“Jensen, I might not always—”

“It’s time for me to go to sleep now,” he says, standing up. “I gave us one extra hour past the time I normally go to sleep. It’s up.”

“Do you want me to—”  I freeze, mid-stand. He’s taking off his shirt. His ribs show like a delicate ladder through his pale skin. When his shirt clears his head, he sees me staring. 

“I can’t sleep with a shirt on. It gets tangled on me.” 

I imagine laying next to him, my hands on his skin. I’m not sure I can do it. Because as much as kissing him is the best thing in the world, it’s all I can do to be content with that. Just because it’s all new to both of us, doesn’t mean I’m made of steel. 

He steps close to me then. “Please stay,” he says, and although he’s not looking at me, he’s looking somewhere about four feet behind and to the left of me, I feel as if he still see right into the heart of me. Sees how scared I am, lets me know without words that it will be okay. 

It will. Somehow, with him, it will all be okay. 

++++++++

_ Jensen _

Patience is not one of my strong points. I literally do not understand why when someone says they will check something and call you back, that they do not check that thing and call you back. Hang up the phone, make another call, look up something on the internet, dial the phone again. That does not take a week. Or two weeks. 

It takes three weeks for the Farrin house to get back to me and assign me an agent, and another week for that agent to return my calls, even though they know that Neil and Cynthia are both interested in this piece. Even though I’m already getting calls at the house for interviews and guest blogs. 

My mom reads the contract and gives her stamp of approval after suggesting a few changes. 

My dad starts bringing me around to more and more of his meetings, so I can start to learn the business better. 

Jared keeps his ear to the ground, seeing how often he sees or hears reference to the painting in everyday life. It’s not often. Actually, I feel like the times that he does are sort of cheating, because he hangs around art galleries more than the average person in New York. That first morning, with the two girls in the hotel, that was just amazing luck, and a fluke, it seems. 

I’m feeling more and more hopeful that the auction will be a big enough deal to make the mainstream news though. I’ve heard people talking millions, and it’s funny because that’s so exciting to me, not because of the money, but because the more it goes for, the bigger news it will be. 

I wake up one morning in late August to find my mother dancing around in the kitchen, singing under her breath, which I find absolutely unbearable. Hearing people sing who can’t really sing is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me, except no one keeps the fingernails on the chalkboard sound going on and on and on. Also, you can be reasonably sure that if you are in a room without a chalkboard, no one is going to surprise you with that sound. Not so with my mother and singing. She might start singing anytime, anywhere, no matter how many times I’ve told her how completely painful it is. I only think she “gets” it at a very superficial level, because if she knew how the sound of it shredded up the inside of my head, she wouldn’t do this to me.

When she turns and sees me, she stops singing immediately, but I think only because you can’t sing and smile that big at the same time. 

“You’re listed!” she says, and holds her arms out wide for a hug, which I dutifully give. She ruffles my hair, which I also hate, but not as much as the singing, so I don’t say anything. 

“Can I have a swiss cheese omelet for breakfast?” I ask. She looks a little deflated. It’s not that I am not excited, but I still have to eat. 

“Aren’t you excited?” She asks, rummaging around in the fridge for eggs and cheese. 

I get out the bread and work on picking the millet seeds out of two pieces. “Of course I am excited. When’s the auction?”

“Two months,” she says. 

“That doesn’t tell me when the auction is,” I argue. “Two months exactly from today?  October nineteenth?”

She sighs. “No, October twenty-eighth.”

“That’s more than two months.”

“I know, I know.” She waves her hand impatiently in my direction. “But I haven’t told you the best part.”

The best part to my mother could be anything. It could be that it’s the same day as someone’s birthday. It could be that the reserve price is an even number, which, I admit, would be pretty cool. A love of even numbers is something my mother and I share, and she totally gets. It could be that the contractors have finally scheduled a day to come in and remodel my closet and I’ll be able to go back to sleeping in my room instead of the guest room, because I won’t have to be freaked out of my mind by that gaping maw of a hole that used to be my closet walls. Who knows.

“Yes?” I prompt her.

“Evening. Auction.”  MARA 3D facial expression:  bursting with joy. Pride. A couple of similar things mixed in. I feel my face doing the same thing, but probably for different reasons. 

An Evening Auction is a big, big, deal. You need tickets for an Evening Auction, you need to dress in formal wear. Items at evening auction seldom go for less than six figures. 

“I’ll need two tickets,” I say. 

“How can you be so calm at a time li—” she stops whisking the eggs. “Two tickets?” she asks. She’s staring at me like I just said the most unbelievable thing ever. More unbelievable than my first piece of art going up at an evening auction. Come on, mom, some perspective. Seriously. I get it, I don’t have many friends that she knows about. Okay, I don’t have _any_ friends that she knows about. But still. 

I can’t say “I need one for my friend Jared,” because that will start a whole new round of questions, and also, I can’t attach the ticket to Jared in any way, or she’ll forget. In the past month, Jared and I have found out a few things about the limits of his disability, which is what we call it now. If I leave it at, “I need two tickets,” Mom will get me two tickets but if I say the ticket is for Jared, as in the specific person, she will forget to get an extra ticket. It’s very, very weird. 

“Yes,” I say, and leave it at that. My parents are pretty good about letting me have my own reasons for things, and knowing when I am not going to talk about it. 

“Okaaaaay,” she says. “Aren’t you going to ask me the reserve price?  The estimate?” 

“What is the reserve price and the estimate?” I ask obediently. 

“One point two million, reserve. Six to eight million, estimate.”

She finally gets the reaction she was looking for from me. The numbers she has just quoted are unheard of. Impossible. This is news. This means interviews and interest beyond the art community. This means coverage beyond the market in New York City. It widens the net. Every single additional person who hears about this increases our chances of finding someone. 

I look at her. Make eye contact, which I know is like the most rewarding thing I can do for her. Her eyes are shining, which I normally consider to be a frightening idiom, like picturing beams of light coming out of someone’s eye sockets, but in this case, I can see what people mean by that phrase. They’re not really shining with light, they are shining with feeling. Beams of feelings are coming out of her eyes. I kind of like it. 

She opens her arms for a hug, and I go to her. I squeeze her really tight and lift her off the ground. She laughs, and then rests her head on my shoulder. I’m so proud of you,” she says. 

“I know.”

Jared is waiting on the front steps of our brownstone when I leave the house. Sometimes, he sleeps over, which is a lot easier to do than it would be with a normal boy. After I introduce him to my parents, and get over the initial adjustment that they always have finding out that I like a boy, we only need to be quiet, out of their sight for a little while before they forget about him. 

Most of the time though, he still sleeps at the shelter, or one of the hotels. I miss him so much overnight. I feel like my life hits some sort of pause button when we’re apart. My excitement about the listing doesn’t feel complete yet, because he doesn’t know. 

“What are you all glowing about?” he asks when I come down the stairs. 

Normally I would call him on a phrase like that, but today, I get it. I saw it with my mom, and I imagine I must look kind of the same way. 

“You’re going to need a tuxedo,” I tell him. 

++++++++

_ Jared _

Finding something to wear turns out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be. 

He doesn’t care at all what I wear, and medium-handsome is definitely good enough for him, but I am nervous about this. From his parents’ point of view, they’ll be meeting me for the first time. If I were his parents and some guy showed up for the first time in an ill-fitting knock-off tux on the night their son is about to make his first million at age eighteen, I’d definitely have my suspicions. Jensen’s parents are wonderful people, and I love them, but you could hardly blame them for feeling that way. 

I want to look comfortable and natural. I want to feel comfortable and natural. I want Jensen and I to look like we’ve been together for longer than just a few hours, and not like I’m playing a part in a cheap rental. And anyway, I don’t think I could do a rental anyway. Those places want to take measurements and give you a suit when they’ve got it made. No way would that work out for me. 

So I troll through consignment shops and vintage clothes stores and try and find a balance between something that looks good, something I don’t have to steal, and something that Jensen won’t have to pay for. 

I don’t stop looking until Jensen says, “wow” when I come out of the fitting room one day. For my part, I know it’s shallow, but I can’t wait to see him in a tux. He’s already dazzlingly handsome, the thought of him dressed up and looking fancy to boot has me weak in the knees. But for my own part, I’ve tried on too many bad suits, ill fitting suits, _stinky_ suits, that I’m just hoping not to be laughed at. His reaction catches me off guard.

“That’s an amazing suit,” he says. “It fits perfect.” That had been his big hang up. The suit _had_ to fit perfect, and he’d rejected several for “fit” issues that I couldn’t detect. Be doesn’t know the best part yet though. It has a secret I know he’ll love. 

“Look,” I say, and flash him the inside of the coat. It’s lined with a dark burgundy crushed velvet. He doesn’t look. He feels. He runs the back of his hand over the lush fabric. His eyes close. I knew he’d love it. I’ve seen how just the touch of something soft can help de-escalate his anxiety, how much he loves stroking the short fur on his Siamese cats’ noses. 

“This feels like you, sleeping over,” he says. “Comforting. Secret.”  

We bring the suit to the dry cleaners. Jensen fills out the slip, which has become our habit—I can get so many more things accomplished if he just fills out the paperwork. We even have a license for selling flowers in central park now. He also pays for an extra month of storage. It’s not like I can cram the suit into my locker at Grand Central Station, and he definitely can’t hide it under his bed. 

“I got invited to Good Morning America,” Jensen says as we walk towards the west side. I have class this afternoon at City University, something that Jensen literally cannot comprehend. 

“Are you going to do it?” I ask. You would think this would be a no-brainer, publicity and all that, but Jensen’s agent Patrick says there’s a risk of over-exposure in these last few weeks. He says part of the appeal of this piece is the novelty of it, and if Jensen wears out that novelty too soon, it could lower the price. 

It’s a risk for us, because we don’t care about the price as much as we do about the publicity, but in the end, Patrick convinced Jensen that if the painting achieves a high enough price, we can have all the publicity that we want afterwards. It also works out better that way, because then we’ll know where it’s going, and the message will be that much clearer. 

“No,” Jensen says. “Good Morning, America was definitely on Patrick’s ‘no’ list. But I am allowed to accept the dinner invitation from Sophia Coppola.”

I privately think that Patrick is a snob of the highest order, but he does apply a certain logic to his decisions. Anything likely to give out too much information, to erode the mystique surrounding Jensen and his art is a no-go. Anything that gets people talking and spreading rumors, that’s all good. 

I wait to see if I’m invited as well, but I’m actually hoping not. The suit completely used up all of the money I had stashed away for emergencies. I cannot afford to buy any more clothes, and I am not showing up for a dinner party at Sophia Coppola’s penthouse wearing cargo pants and a t-shirt. Although, who knows. Maybe that would increase Jensen’s _je ne sais quoi._

Jensen kisses me goodbye on the steps of the Math Building. Kissing him is my absolute favorite thing. Next to talking to him. And walking with him. And watching him sketch. Or everything. They’re all tied for my favorite thing in the world. I have it pretty bad, in case you haven’t noticed. 

“Kevin after class?” he asks. 

“Sure thing.”

Kevin is a boy who lives on the same block as Jensen and his parents. He also has autism, although it’s a little more pronounced than what Jensen is dealing with. We visited him yesterday and played Halo the Awakening for two hours straight, but it was hard to judge if he remembered me or not after I left the room for several minutes. He didn’t react much when Jensen first introduced me to him, and it was pretty much the same when I came back into the room. Today we’re going to try and get his attention away from the game, and see. 

When I take my seat, the girl next to me gives me a look, the same sort of look people get on their face when they step in gum. “Are you _just_ starting the class now?” she asks. “The final exam is _next week.”_

After spending the morning with Jensen, I realize how incredibly, incredibly lucky I am. What if I meet some other people like myself, or other people who can remember me, and they are all like this girl?  Or worse?  Because they could be a _lot_ worse. Look at me, going to school and volunteering at the homeless shelter where I sometimes live, when I could be robbing banks or murdering people and getting away scot-free. 

Or the people I meet could be complete psychopaths. Seriously, sometimes I wonder why I am not. 

I’m completely lost in class today. I made it a bit farther than last time, but it looks like I’ll be taking the class again next semester. Jensen says that even if _If No One Can Remember You, Meet Here_ gets sold in October, it probably won’t be on display until sometime next year, so I’ll still be free this fall to take classes. Plus, Jensen will be in school as well, so I’ll need to find some different things to fill my time than what I’ve been doing this summer, which is art, Jensen, art, art and some more Jensen. 

I’m going to audit another photography class, because I think with Jensen’s help that I can do a little better selling prints to galleries. He showed some of my work to his father, and he said he’d let Jensen bring my portfolio around to some of his contacts, when Jensen explained that it was for a “friend who was too socially anxious” to do it themselves. Jensen’s parents are expert at accommodations.

When I step out into the evening light after class, I don’t see Jensen anywhere, which is unusual. He’s extremely punctual. If he says five pm, he means five pm, and he gets pretty agitated when other people are late, or not where they said they would be. 

I wait.

And wait. 

And I wait until panic starts to squeeze my chest. 

And he doesn’t come. 

++++++++ 

_ Jensen _

I press my head tight into the corner of my room so I don’t need to see the gaping maw of my closet. It doesn’t help though, because I can hear the space. I can hear how the echoes and creaks of the house sound hollow and open, even after my mother closes the door, so I knock my forehead against the wall to keep the sound out. 

I’m not sure what I was thinking, giving up the coping mechanism that worked so well for me for fifteen years. I should have at least had a plan for what I would do instead. Now I’m flailing around in all this space, and there’s nothing to catch onto. My father is on the phone with the contractors, but they won’t be here for at least another day, and even then, it will take them several hours, if not more than a day to fix it, and while that’s happening there will be that grinding noise of the power tools and microscopic dust everywhere that you can’t even get up with the HEPA filter vacuum. 

“Jen?” Mom says, quiet. “Jen, I want to help. Maybe I didn’t listen to what you were saying you needed. Let’s work through this together, okay?”

I knock my head against the wall. It helps. It’s something I can control. It’s something bad, but I can stop it when I’m ready, unlike ninety nine percent of the other things in my life. My mother knows. She waits. She’s patient, and that helps too, because it’s something I can count on. 

My father comes in the room behind us. I can’t see him, because my eyes are squeezed tight and my face is still in the corner, but I can hear him. I can hear how the echoes of his feet on the wood floor are different than they would be if the raw bones of my closet weren’t showing.  It makes all the nerves in my back shiver and clench. 

He opens my closet door and throws something soft onto the ground. Pillows?  He closes the door, and then I listen very carefully, because it’s difficult to tell what he’s doing. I stop my knocking and just press my head very tightly into the corner. 

“Hey, that’s good Jen,” my mother says. “Do you want to see what we’re doing?”

My body feels so tense and tight, I am not sure I can turn around. I don’t say anything. 

“I’m putting down sound dampeners,” my father says. 

I hear the doors close, and then another soft sound. 

“Nothing bad is happening right now,” my mother says. “You can do this. It’s not scary to turn around and walk out of the room.”

Of course it’s not scary. She tries very hard, but she just doesn’t get it. It’s not that it’s scary, it’s that there’s just too much of everything. It’s like there’s this huge wall of differentness and uncertainty pushing on me, crushing me. But the reassuring sound of her voice, if not her words, loosen me up enough so that I can realize that if I turn around, I can see what’s going on, and that will at least reduce some of the uncertainty.

I turn and press my back tightly against the wall. I grit my teeth really, really hard. I see that my father has put a blanket down on the floor where the closet door meets the floor. He’s right. It does help, a little. I take an experimental deep breath.

“You can sleep in the guest room for now,” my mother says.

“When you calm down, we can talk about the auction,” my father says. 

The thing is, it’s not about the auction, and it’s not really about the closet. What started this is that I got lost. Worse than getting lost, I lost track of some time. I think.  I was walking on the Upper West Side, when all of a sudden, I realized I had no idea where I was going, or why I was there. Which was extremely upsetting to me, as my internal clock is usually extremely accurate. It didn’t take me very long to get back on track, but I came home feeling really overwhelmed and agitated, and as soon as I opened up the front door, I could tell the difference. The whole house sounded different, and my normally safe haven was gone, and if I don’t have a home base where I can go and contain everything, then it’s like I’m adrift in the whole universe with no boundaries. 

There’s a reading nook in the guest room, a little alcove with overstuffed chairs and soft lighting and I decide to camp out there for a while. I curl in a ball in one of the chairs. This whole thing had been like a chain reaction, uncertainties adding up on top of each other, until everything in me crashed down at once. But now I’ve got a few things to steady myself on. My mother’s voice. The walls of my house knitting themselves around me into a whole again, or at least as much of a whole as they can be with my closet gone. My father, maybe not always doing and saying the exactly right thing, but trying. The velvety feel of the suede throw pillows my mother hands me.

“Jen, what set this o—”

She’s interrupted by a knock at the door. It’s so quiet and tentative, I almost don’t hear it. I know my mother doesn’t, until she sees me looking in the direction of the sound. 

“I’ve got it,” my father says from somewhere else in the house. I listen to his footsteps. They’re still different, but more contained. I can tolerate it until the contractors put up new walls in the closet. 

Father speaks to someone in the doorway, a quiet boy’s voice.   

“What set this off?  How can we help this not happen again?” my mom asks. 

“I got lost,” I say. 

She wrinkles her brow. “But you made it home, no harm done, right?”

“Home wasn’t the same home as it was the last time I needed it.”

She nods. “I’m sorry honey. You seemed so sure.”

The funny thing is, I can’t even imagine what would have enticed me to sell. Certainly not the money. Cynthia and Neil have been offering me money for years, and that’s never tempted me before. Something. Something just made me think it was done and I didn’t need it any longer. 

My father comes in with a cup of tea for me, and a Xanax. 

“It doesn’t matter about selling it, that part’s fine,” I say. “Just, we need to fix the space where it was.”

“We are,” they say in unison. 

“I just spoke with Barry Carlson on the phone, and offered him a bonus to come tomorrow rather than waiting for Monday.”

“Do you want to stay in a hotel until it’s done?” my mother asks. 

I consider. It’s possible for unexpected things to happen at a hotel, but usually, they are very much the same all the time. If we stay at The Mark like we sometimes do, we might even be able to get our usual suite, which would be very good, since a) I am very familiar with it, and b) you can see the Metropolitan Museum of Art from the balcony. 

“Yes.”

“I’ll call,” my father says. 

Just as he’s leaving the guest room, there’s a knock on the door. He frowns. “Were you expecting anyone?” he asks my mother. 

“No,” she says to his back as he turns to go get the door. To me, she asks, “Anything special you want me to pack for you?” 

I don’t answer for a moment, I’m listening to my father speak to someone at the door. A boy’s voice, quiet. “Now is not a good time,” I hear my father say. “I’m sorry.” Then he shuts the door. 

“Who was that?” my mother calls over her shoulder. 

“I’m not sure," my father says, as he comes back into the room. “A young man who says he’s friends with Jensen, but I didn’t recognize him. Were you expecting anyone?” he asks me. 

“No.”

“I told him it wasn’t a good time. It may have been someone trying to get an interview.”

“I can pack my own things,” I say. It’s getting easier to breathe, to feel like I’m not falling. We have a plan, so that’s fine. I can do this. I try not to think about a stranger at the door. I know my limits, and worrying about him will only set me back from how far I’ve come in the last few moments. 

School will start in a few days, and that will be a big relief. I don’t enjoy school, exactly, but the structure of the day, always knowing what I’m going to do next is good for me, even if it’s math or composition or something. And at the end of the day, I have private studies for art history. Thinking about returning to my school schedule helps too. I head for my room to pack. Probably the Xanax didn’t hurt either. 

Behind me, I hear my mother heave a big sigh of relief. 

“Pack for two days,” my father says. “If it ends up being longer than that, I’ll come back and grab a few extra things.”  His voice is muffled for this last bit, as he has come up behind my mother and pulled her in close, resting his face on her cheek. 

I stand in the doorway of my room, looking at the closet, with the tartan wool blanket my father put along the bottom of the doors. So weird how something that has always been such a grounding influence on me has turned into such an uncertainty. I wonder how I will cope with the blank walls. I decide that it’s the act of doing art, not the art itself that helped me, so fine. I’ll do some more once the new walls are in. I have no idea why I thought I was done. 

There’s a knock on the door. I doubt my parents have heard it, as they are now on the upper floor where their bedroom suite is. I feel more or less leveled out, so I head down to the ground floor to get the door. 

I look through the peephole, and there’s a boy there. His face is a perfect MARA 3d facial expression: worry. There are tight lines around his blue-brown eyes, and his thick, shaggy hair is falling into his face despite his nervous attempt to tuck it behind one ear. He looks like a person who’s dog got hit by a car, or who’s little sister has run off and not come back. 

When I open the door, all the worry vanishes for a second, and his facial expression changes rapidly from worried to MARA 3d facial expression: recognition, blended with MARA 3d facial expression: relief and MARA 3d facial expression: happiness.

“Can I help you?” I ask, taking a step back because all that stuff on his face is directed at me and it feels like a giant wave of feelings just smacks into me. 

And just like that, as fast as it came, the smile and relief is gone. Rapidly replaced by MARA 3d facial expression: trying not to cry. Which is definitely one of my least favorite expressions to be faced with. 

“Je—” It sounds for a second like he’s going to say my name, but he snaps his jaw shut and looks to the side, which is a huge relief for me. “I’m sorry,” he says, his voice tight, and another clue that he is _trying not to cry_. 

“I must have the wrong address.”  And then he turns and walks away. 

++++++++

_ Jared _

There’s a certain big rock in Central Park I like to sit at when I need to think. But it’s night, so that’s out. That’s also the reason I had to go to Jensen’s house instead of following our plan, which was to meet at _The Storm_ if we ever couldn’t find each other. The museum closed hours ago.

I can’t believe I let my guard down like that. I can’t believe I let myself believe that it was finally over. At least, partially. I thought that those few precious weeks with Jensen meant that it was going to last forever and I stopped telling myself that it was only a dream. 

I had been prepared to knock on that door all night long, or as long as it took for his father to remember that there had been a boy at the door who wanted to check if Jensen was alright. I was ready to wait until Jensen figured out it was me, and come answer the door himself. I was ready to accept whatever reason he gave for not showing up. I was not ready for him not to know me. 

There’s a massive hole torn through me. I keep seeing his face, completely blank of any hint of recognition. I keep seeing his eyes slide right past me.  I keep seeing my mother’s face, looking down at me when I was only a preschooler, and denying having ever seen me. 

There’s an all-night diner in Hell’s Kitchen, where you can get a plate of empanadas for less than three bucks any time of day. It’s about a half hour walk from here, so I turn that way. I’m all but completely broke, having spent all my money on that stupid suit. What had I been thinking?  Jensen has the dry cleaning slip, so there’s no way I’ll get it back, even for the small amount of money I could resell it for. I imagine the slip itself might already be gone, mysteriously dissolved from reality along with Jensen’s memories of me. 

The waitress who greets me is only half paying attention to me, she’s got a couple girlfriends sitting at the counter, and that’s always a bad sign for me. But there’s an empty seat front and center, so it might not go too badly. I order the dessert empanadas and a cup of black coffee. 

So what next?  I’m not ready to give up, not yet. As painful as that was, I can’t help but still hold out some hope. Maybe my “curse” is fading off, but not gone?  Maybe if I am patient, it will go back to how it was with him. If he’s forgotten me, he’s probably also forgotten the plan and _the Storm,_ but I know his schedule. If I can get up the courage to face the prospect of having my heart shredded again and again, I can keep trying. This can’t all have been for nothing.

The empanadas are just what I needed. Well, except for needing a single person in the whole world to remember me so I can at least pretend to have a sort of normal life, that would be good too. But in terms of food that strengthens your will to live, these empanadas cannot be beat. Crisp and greasy on the outside, rich and chocolatey with slices of banana and a hint of cinnamon on the inside. I let the hot coffee slide down my throat and cleanse my palate for another bite, and another, until I’m dismayed to look down at my plate and find it’s all gone.

I have a plan now. I need to follow the auction, I need to keep trying with Jensen. That’s all I can do, and that’s all I will do. 

The next morning is Cronut morning. In case you have been living under a culinary rock, which to be fair, I practically have—eating at cheap diners and the homeless shelter like I do—a cronut is a cross between a croissant and a donut. It’s croissant dough shaped and fried like a donut, filled with pastry cream, and glazed. I’ve had one, they are heaven and hell in piece of wax paper.

Sunday mornings, people line up by the hundreds outside Dominique Ansel’s bakery on Spring Street. I am a professional line waiter there, which is perfectly legal, and a fabulous way to make money. I wait in line, which I mentally divide into fifths. Once I pass the first fifth mark, I hold up a sign offering my spot in line for five dollars. If I make it to the second fifth before selling my spot, I charge ten dollars, and so forth until I get up to the front of the line, where I can charge as much as twenty five dollars, and I’ve never not had a paying customer at that rate, in fact, I have better sales at those high prices in the front of the line than I do for the lower ones in the back. I can make seventy five or one hundred dollars an hour this way, and the lines generally stay long for at least two hours. 

I’m torn this morning because I need the money really badly, but I want to get to the museum, and I want to check the art section news but I am really, really low on money. That damn suit. What can I do though? I have to survive. So I stand in line, straining my ears to hear anyone talking about art, anyone at all. 

But no one is. I tell myself that Jensen not remembering me has nothing to do with the auction, and there’s no reason why the closet piece won’t sell, and I can keep up with that part of the plan at least. So it’s not really that I’m not worried about the auction and Stage Three, I’m worried about Jensen.

Maybe I shouldn’t be. He got along fine without me before we met, and now it’s like we never met. No big deal, right?  But when he came to the door last night, he did look stressed. He looked terrible, in fact, which is really saying something, considering how amazingly handsome he is. Pale and drawn, with blotchy patches of red thrown across his cheeks. 

I feel like if the auction goes as planned, that’s my sign that he’s doing okay. If he withdraws, then something is wrong. It’s so infuriating wanting to know. Wanting to go to him and ask: _what happened?  Are you okay?_ As much as it hurts, I want him to be perfectly fine. 

I only go through the line five times before I quit. I increase my price to forty dollars for the front spot in line, and make it easily all three times, plus two takers at the twenty-dollar position, for a total of one hundred and forty dollars. Enough. 

I pay ten dollars to get into the museum today, which seems to be the magic lowest possible “donation” that doesn’t get an eye-roll and hassle from the gals at the ticket window. My heart is beating painfully hard in my chest, reminding me of the first time I did this, the first time I tested him. Then, my heart beat quick from excitement, now from dread. It’s twenty minutes past eleven o’clock, so I find him at _Still Life with a Bottle of Rum._ I didn’t even bother looking at _The Storm._ I’m really just kidding myself here, I knew last night when he opened the door that it was over. 

“You’re a really fabulous artist,” I tell him when I can coax my vocal cords to work. 

“Thank you,” he says, not looking up from his sketch. 

“You look really familiar,” I say, “do I know you?”

“I don’t think so.”

I want so desperately for him to look at me. To meet my eyes. Maybe something would click. 

“Wait. I know. You’re that guy who’s selling his closet.”

“It’s not my closet any longer. It’s a triptych.”

“My name’s Jared,” I say, stepping a little closer, holding out my hand. 

“I don’t really enjoy meeting new people,” Jensen says, “I know that’s probably rude, but I’m happy just to be drawing and not talking.”

He glances up. Maybe to see if I’ve taken offense, or if I’m going to walk away and leave him alone. But he sees me, I know he does.

And nothing. 

++++++++

_ Jensen _

“You look really fabulous,” my mother says, straightening my tie. “It’s a shame you never got around to asking your friend to come with us.”

“What friend?” I ask. I wish she would stop talking. This whole thing is overwhelming as it is. I’m barely holding it together. 

“I don’t know. But remember you asked me to get two tickets?”  

“Did I? I don’t know why I said that.”

“It’s okay. We’ve got enough going on tonight without an extra person along.” 

Mom is the one who looks really amazing. She’s wearing this burgundy velvet dress that reminds me of… something. In my mind, it evokes this weird association, like secrets, and hidden messages. But there’s nothing secret about mom’s dress, and she looks like something really special. Dad can’t keep his hands off her, he keeps touching her waist or her shoulder or stroking her hair. I’m really glad I am not wearing that dress. 

I know a lot of people at the auction.  Of course there’s Cynthia and Neil, and Sophia Coppola, who I met at dinner last month, and a few gallery owners that are friends of my father’s. I see the triptych in the gallery, waiting to be brought in, and I’m relieved to find that I don’t feel any kind of attachment to it. My new closet is working out just fine, although I haven’t done any drawing in it yet, I don’t really know where to begin with that. It will come though.

I stand in front of the triptych, and look at the section at the very top. There are three types of people who are interested in bidding on _If No One Can Remember You, Meet Here._

The first is people who are interested in autism. There’s been a lot of commentary on what this piece can reveal about the autistic mind, including the well-known fact that I’m not embarrassed about my private thoughts and primitive efforts on display for everyone to see. 

Then there are the people for whom the piece has achieved a sort of cult-like status. The odd name, the whispered rumors. Patrick was right to keep me off the mainstream media, it worked perfectly. They say Stephen King will be bidding by telephone tonight. 

Then there are the people who are interested in it as a piece of art. And these people tend to focus on that final addition. The sketch with _The Storm_ and the enigmatic eyes scrawled over it. Critics say that that part really demonstrates my artistic and emotional maturity. Others say that it shows the sort of lightning bolt type inspiration that gives art meaning apart from the physical images. 

The eyes are my favorite part too, although I can’t exactly say why. Looking at them now, I feel burgundy velvet under my fingertips, and I know in my heart that if they had been rendered in color, they would have been blue-brown. They’re the only part of the triptych that I’ll miss. 

The bidding goes too fast, I cannot follow what is happening. I didn’t realize it before but I’m really hoping Neil Pinna wins it. The museum is like my second home, and it would be easy to visit it nearly every day if it were there. A gallery would be harder, but do-able, depending where it is. 

The bidding, which had started at a million, quickly goes up to five, then stalls a bit, and it looks like Charles Seton, a private collector, will win it, before Neil puts in another bid and it starts up again. Six million. Seven. 

I’m not sure what made me say that public display would be a condition of the sale, and my father says that it’s unusual that we were able to get the auction house to agree to that, but I’m glad it worked out that way. If a private collector wins it, I’ll still be able to see it for at least a year, one way or another. I think I will miss it.

Twelve million, six hundred and forty two thousand. The winning bid, a surprise bid from the Museum of Modern Art, which had never publicly expressed interest in the piece before. Okay, okay. That’s good. MoMa is actually a slightly shorter distance from my house. I can visit the triptych any time I want, for as long as they have it on display. 

For some reason, I’m really interested to see the kinds of people who come to look at it. 

 

_ Jared _

It’s actually not easy for me to access the internet. Most libraries these days require a valid library card if you want to sit down at one of their desktop terminals and browse the web. However, if you have the entire New York Public Library at your disposal, you hardly have need of the internet at all. 

I learn that the Museum of Modern Art is the thirteenth most visited art museum in the world, well below the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is fourth. Still: three point one million visitors per year. He did it. He really did it. I remember the first day that Jensen told me about stage three, and how he didn’t want to tell me exactly what he had in mind, in case it couldn’t work. It worked better than we ever could have expected, and he’ll never know. At least, I don’t let myself hope.

I visit Jensen nearly every day. Some days, I talk to him, compliment his art, ask if I can share his table in the café. Some days, I just sit on a bench near him and watch him draw. It depends on his mood. I’m not sure how I’ll feel if he ever starts coming here with another boy, but until then, he’s the closest thing I’ve got to a friend, even if he doesn’t know it. 

He doesn’t show any signs of remembering me at all, not even that sort of, _hey, don’t I know you_ feeling that I think everyone gets from time to time, whether it ends up being real or imagined. I think a lot about what that means. Why did it happen at all if it was going to end like this?  Maybe there’s no meaning to it at all, and we’re all just living in a completely random universe and anything can happen without good reason. Maybe there’s a higher power that wanted me to have a taste of happiness, even if just for a little while. Maybe I met Jensen just so that _If No One Can Remember You, Meet Here_ could happen, and if that was destined to happen, maybe there’s a reason. I like to think it’s one or both of those last two options, rather than the first, because if there’s someone directing the works down here, then maybe they have a plan for me and Jensen and this isn’t how it will end. 

So what can I do?  _If No One Can Remember You, Meet Here_ opens today. I go to the Museum of Modern Art, smile at Jensen as I pass by, and wait.


End file.
